McBain's Ladies: The Women of the 87th Precinct

Cindy Forrest

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 glamor 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 backseat 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 which 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 Héloïse about to keep an assignation with Abelard, she walked into the squad room 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 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 thirty-eight, 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 squad room? 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 thirty-eight, but if you take one step closer to me, I’ll clonk you right on the head with my shoe.”

“Look, you weren’t exactly radiating…”

“I’ve never in my entire life dealt with anyone as…”

“… sunshine when you came in here. You looked sore, and I automatically…”

“… suspicious, or as rude, or as overbearing in his manner…”

“… assumed you…”

“Shut up when I’m talking!” Cindy shouted.

“Look, miss,” Kling said angrily. “This happens to be a police station, and I happen to be a policeman, and I…”

“Some policeman!” Cindy snapped.

“You want me to kick you out of here?” Kling said menacingly.

“I want you to apologize to me!” Cindy yelled.

“Yeah, you’ve got a fat chance.”

“Yeah, I’m going to tell you something, Mister Big Shot Boss’s Son. If you think a citizen…”

“I’m not the boss’s son,” Kling yelled.

“You said you were!” Cindy yelled back.

“Only because you were so snotty!”

“I was snotty? I was…”

“I’m not used to seventeen-year-old brats…”

“I’m nineteen! Damn you, I’m twenty!”

“Make up your mind!” Kling shouted, and Cindy picked up her bag by the straps and swung it at him. Kling instinctively put up one of his hands, and the black leather collided with the flat palm, and all the junk Cindy had painstakingly put back into the bag came spilling out again, all over the floor.

They both stood stock-still, as if the spilling contents of the bag were an avalanche. Cigarettes, matches, lipstick, eyeshadow, sunglasses, a comb, an address and appointment book, a bottle of APC tablets, a book of twenty-five gummed parcel-post labels, a checkbook, a compact, more matches, a package of Chiclets, an empty cigarette package, a scrap of yellow paper with the handwritten words “Laundry, Quiz Philosophy,” a hairbrush, an eyelash curler, two more combs, a package of Kleenex, several soiled Kleenex tissues, more matches, a pillbox without any pills in it, a box of Sucrets, two pencils, a wallet, more matches, a ballpoint pen, three pennies, several empty cellophane wrappers, and a peach pit all came tumbling out of the bag and fell onto the floor to settle in a disorderly heap between them.

Kling looked down at the mess.

Cindy looked down at the mess.

Silently, she knelt and began filling the bag again. She worked without looking up at him, without saying a word. Then she rose, picked up the manila folder from the desk, put it into Kling’s hands, and frostily said, “Will you please see that Detective Carella gets this?”

Kling accepted the folder. “Who shall I say left it?”

“Cynthia Forrest.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about…”

“Detective Kling, I think you are the biggest bastard I’ve ever met in my life,” Cindy said, enunciating every word sharply and distinctly.

Then she turned and walked out of the squad room.

Ten Plus One, 1963

The man was sitting on a bench in the reception room when Miles Vollner came back from lunch that Wednesday afternoon. Vollner glanced at him, and then looked quizzically at his receptionist. The girl shrugged slightly and went back to her typing. The moment Vollner was inside his private office, he buzzed her.

“Who’s that waiting outside?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” the receptionist said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“He wouldn’t give me his name, sir.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“Sir, he’s sitting right here,” the receptionist said, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’d rather not—”

“What’s the matter with you?” Vollner said. “This is my office, not his. What did he say when you asked him his name?”

“He — he told me to go to hell, sir.”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be right out,” Vollner said.

He did not go right out because his attention was caught by a letter on his desk, the afternoon mail having been placed there some five minute’s ago by his secretary. He opened the letter, read it quickly, and then smiled because it was a large order from a retailer in the Midwest, a firm Vollner had been trying to get as a customer for the last six months. The company Vollner headed was small but growing. It specialized in audiovisual components, with its factory across the River Harb in the next state, and its business and administrative office here on Shepherd Street in the city. Fourteen people worked in the business office — ten men and four women. Two hundred and six people worked in the plant. It was Vollner s hope and expectation that both office and factory staffs would have to be doubled within the next year, and perhaps trebled the year after that. The large order from the Midwest retailer confirmed his beliefs, and pleased him enormously. But then he remembered the man sitting outside, and the smile dropped from his face. Sighing, he went to the door, opened it, and walked down the corridor to the reception room.

The man was still sitting there.

He could not have been older than twenty-three or twenty-four, a sinewy man with a pale narrow face and hooded brown eyes. He was clean-shaven and well dressed, wearing a gray topcoat open over a darker gray suit. A pearl-gray fedora was on top of his head. He sat on the bench with his arms folded across his chest, his legs outstretched, seemingly quite at ease. Vollner went to the bench and stood in front of him.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“Nope.”

“What do you want here?”

“That’s none of your business,” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Vollner answered, “but it is my business. I happen to own this company.”

“Yeah?” He looked around the reception room, and smiled. “Nice place you’ve got.”

The receptionist, behind her desk, had stopped typing and was watching the byplay. Vollner could feel her presence behind him.

“Unless you can tell me what you want here,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The man was still smiling. “Well,” he said, “I’m not about to tell you what I want here, and I’m not about to leave, either.”

For a moment, Vollner was speechless. He glanced at the receptionist, and then turned back to the man. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll have to call the police.”

“You call the police, and you’ll be very sorry.”

“We’ll see about that,” Vollner said. He walked to the receptionist’s desk and said, “Miss Di Santo, will you get me the police, please?”

The man rose from the bench. He was taller than he had seemed while sitting, perhaps six feet two or three inches, with wide shoulders and enormous hands. He moved toward the desk and, still smiling, said, “Miss Di Santo, I wouldn’t pick up that phone if I was you.”

Miss Di Santo wet her lips and looked at Vollner.

“Call the police,” Vollner said.

“Miss Di Santo, if you so much as put your hand on that telephone, I’ll break your arm. I promise you that.”

Miss Di Santo hesitated. She looked again to Vollner, who frowned and then said, “Never mind, Miss Di Santo,” and without saying another word, walked to the entrance door and out into the corridor and toward the elevator. His anger kept building inside him all the way down to the lobby floor. He debated calling the police from a pay phone, and then decided he would do better to find a patrolman on the beat and bring him back upstairs personally. It was two o’clock, and the city streets were thronged with afternoon shoppers. He found a patrolman on the corner of Shepherd and Seventh, directing traffic. Vollner stepped out into the middle of the intersection and said, “Officer, I’d—”

“Hold it a minute, mister,” the patrolman said. He blew his whistle and waved at the oncoming automobiles. Then he turned to Vollner and said, “Now, what is it?”

“There’s a man up in my office, won’t tell us what his business is.”

“Yeah?” the patrolman said.

“Yes. He threatened me and my receptionist, and he won’t leave.”

“Yeah?” The patrolman kept looking at Vollner curiously, as though only hall believing him.

“Yes. I’d like you to come up and help me get him out of there.”

“You would, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And who’s gonna handle the traffic on this corner?” the patrolman said.

“This man is threatening us,” Vollner said. “Surely that’s more important than—”

“This is one of the biggest intersections in the city right here, and you want me to leave it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to—”

“Mister, don’t bug me, huh?” the patrolman said, and blew his whistle, and raised his hand, and then turned and signaled to the cars on his right.

“What’s your shield number?” Vollner said.

“Don’t bother reporting me,” the patrolman answered. “This is my post, and I’m not supposed to leave it. You want a cop, go use the telephone.”

“Thanks,” Vollner said tightly. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t mention it,” the patrolman said breezily, and looked up at the traffic light, and then blew his whistle again. Vollner walked back to the curb and was about to enter the cigar store on the corner, when he spotted a second policeman. Still fuming, he walked to him rapidly and said, “There’s a man up in my office who refuses to leave and who is threatening my staff. Now, just what the hell do you propose to do about it?”

The patrolman was startled by Vollner’s outburst. He was a new cop and a young cop, and he blinked his eyes and then immediately said, “Where’s your office, sir? I’ll go back there with you.”

“This way,” Vollner said, and they began walking toward the building. The patrolman introduced himself as Ronnie Fairchild. He seemed brisk and efficient until they entered the lobby, where he began to have his first qualms.

“Is the man armed?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Vollner said.

“Because if he is, maybe I ought to get some help.”

“I think you can handle it,” Vollner said.

“You think so?” Fairchild said dubiously, but Vollner had already led him into the elevator. They got out of the car on the tenth floor, and again Fairchild hesitated. “Maybe I ought to call this in,” he said. “After all…”

“By the time you call in, the man may kill someone,” Vollner suggested.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Fairchild said hesitantly, thinking that if he didn’t call this in and ask for help, the person who got killed might very well be himself. He paused outside the door to Vollner’s office. “In there, huh?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, okay, let’s go.”

They entered the office. Vollner walked directly to the man, who had taken his seat on the bench again, and said, “Here he is, Officer.”

Fairchild pulled back his shoulders. He walked to the bench. “All right, what’s the trouble here?” he asked.

“No trouble, Officer.”

“This man tells me you won’t leave his office.”

“That’s right. I came here to see a girl.”

“Oh,” Fairchild said, ready to leave at once now that he knew this was only a case of romance. “If that’s all…”

“What girl?” Vollner said.

“Cindy.”

“Get Cindy out here,” Vollner said to his receptionist, and she rose immediately and hurried down the corridor. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a friend of Cindy’s?”

“You didn’t ask me,” the man said.

“Listen, if this is just a private matter—”

“No, wait a minute,” Vollner said, putting his hand on Fairchild’s arm. “Cindy’ll be out here in a minute.”

“That’s good,” the man said. “Cindy’s the one I want to see.”

“Who are you?” Vollner asked.

“Well, who are you?”

“I’m Miles Vollner. Look, young man—”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Vollner,” the man said, and smiled again.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t think I’d like to tell you that.”

“Officer, ask him what his name is.”

“What’s your name, mister?” Fairchild said, and at that moment the receptionist came back, followed by a tall blond girl wearing a blue dress and high-heeled pumps. She stopped just alongside the receptionist’s desk and said, “Did you want me, Mr. Vollner?”

“Yes, Cindy. There’s a friend of yours here to see you.”

Cindy looked around the reception room. She was a strikingly pretty girl of twenty-two, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blond hair cut casually close to her head, her eyes a cornflower blue that echoed the color of her dress. She studied Fairchild and then the man in gray. Puzzled, she turned again to Vollner.

“A friend of mine?” she asked.

“This man says he came here to see you.”

“Me?”

“He says he’s a friend of yours.”

Cindy looked at the man once more, and then shrugged. “I don’t know you,” she said.

“No, huh?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Listen, what is this?” Fairchild said.

“You’re going to know me, baby,” the man said.

Cindy looked at him coldly, and said, “I doubt that very much,” and turned and started to walk away. The man came off the bench immediately, catching her by the arm.

“Just a second,” he said.

“Let go of me.”

“Honey, I’m never gonna let go of you.”

“Leave the girl alone,” Fairchild said.

“We don’t need fuzz around here,” the man answered. “Get lost.”

Fairchild took a step toward him, raising his club. The man whirled suddenly, planting his left fist in Fairchild’s stomach. As Fairchild doubled over, the man unleashed a vicious uppercut that caught him on the point of his jaw and sent him staggering toward the wall. Groggily, Fairchild reached for his gun. The man kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the floor groaning. The man kicked him again, twice in the head, and then repeatedly in the chest. The receptionist was screaming now. Cindy was running down the corridor, shouting for help. Vollner stood with his fists clenched, waiting for the man to turn and attack him next.

Instead, the man only smiled and said, “Tell Cindy I’ll be seeing her,” and walked out of the office.

Vollner immediately went to the phone. Men and women were coming out of their private offices all up and down the corridor now. The receptionist was still screaming. Quickly, Vollner dialed the police and was connected with the 87th Precinct.

Sergeant Murchison took the call and advised Vollner that he’d send a patrolman there immediately and that a detective would stop by either later that day or early tomorrow morning.

Vollner thanked him and hung up. His hand was trembling, and his receptionist was still screaming.

The man assigned to investigate the somewhat odd incident in Miles Vollner’s office was Detective Bert Kling. Early Thursday morning, while Carella and Meyer were still asleep, Kling took the subway down to the precinct, stopped at the squad room to see if there were any messages for him on the bulletin board, and then bused over to Shepherd Street. Vollner’s office was on the tenth floor. The lettering on the frosted-glass door disclosed that the name of the firm was Vollner Audiovisual Components, unimaginative but certainly explicit. Kling opened the door and stepped into the reception room. The girl behind the reception desk was a small brunette, her hair cut in bangs across her forehead. She looked up as Kling walked in, smiled, and said, “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

“I’m from the police,” Kling said. “I understand there was some double here yesterday.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said, “there certainly was!”

“Is Mr. Vollner in yet?”

“No, he isn’t,” the girl said. “Was he expecting you?”

“Well, not exactly. The desk sergeant—”

“Oh, he doesn’t usually come in until about ten o’clock,” the girl said. “It’s not even nine-thirty yet.”

“I see,” Kling said. “Well, I have some other stops to make, so maybe I can catch him later on in the—”

“Cindy’s here, though,” the girl said.

“Cindy?”

“Yes. She’s the one he came to see.”

“What do you mean?”

“The one he said he came to see, anyway.”

“The assailant, do you mean?”

“Yes. He said he was a friend of Cindy’s.”

“Oh. Well, look, do you think I could talk to her? Until Mr. Vollner gets here?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not,” the girl said, and pressed a button in the base of her phone. Into the receiver, she said, “Cindy, there’s a detective here to talk about yesterday. Can you see him? Okay, sure.” She replaced the receiver. “In a few minutes, Mr….” She let the sentence hang.

“Kling.”

“Mr. Kling. She’s got someone in the office with her.” The girl paused. “She interviews applicants for jobs out at the plant, you see.”

“Oh. Is she in charge of hiring?”

“No, our personnel director does all the hiring.”

“Then why does she interview—”

“Cindy is assistant to the company psychologist.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, she interviews all the applicants, you know, and later our psychologist tests them. To see if they’d be happy working out at the plant. I mean, they have to put together these tiny little transistor things, you know, there’s a lot of pressure doing work like that.”

“I’ll bet there is,” Kling said.

“Sure, there is. So they come here, and first she talks to them for a few minutes, to try to find out what their background is, you know, and then if they pass the first interview, our psychologist gives them a battery of psychological tests later on. Cindy’s work is very important. She majored in psychology at college, you know. Our personnel director won’t even consider a man if Cindy and our psychologist say he’s not suited for the work.”

“Sort of like picking a submarine crew,” Kling said.

“What? Oh, yes, I guess it is,” the girl said, and smiled. She turned as a man came down the corridor. He seemed pleased and even inspired by his first interview with the company’s assistant psychologist. He smiled at the receptionist, and then he smiled at Kling and went to the entrance door, and then turned and smiled at them both again, and went out.

“I think she’s free now,” the receptionist said. “Just let me check.” She lifted the phone again, pressed the button, and waited. “Cindy, is it all right to send him in now? Okay.” She replaced the receiver. “Go right in,” she said. “It’s number fourteen, the fifth floor on the left.”

“Thank you,” Kling said.

“Not at all,” the girl answered.

He nodded and walked past her desk and into the corridor. The doors on the left-hand side started with the number 8 and then progressed arithmetically down the corridor. The number 13 was missing from the door. In its place, and immediately following 12, was 14. Kling wondered if the company’s assistant psychologist was superstitious, and then knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a girl’s voice said.

He opened the door.

The girl was standing near the window, her back to him. One hand held a telephone receiver to her ear, the blond hair pushed away from it. She was wearing a dark skirt and a white blouse. The jacket that matched the skirt was draped over the back of her chair. She was very tall, and she had a good figure and a good voice. “No, John,” she said, “I didn’t think a Rorschach was indicated. Well, if you say so. I’ll call you back later, I’ve got someone with me. Right. G’bye.” She turned to put the phone back into its cradle, and then looked up at Kling.

They recognized each other immediately.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cindy said.

“So you’re Cindy,” Kling said. “Cynthia Forrest. I’ll be damned.”

“Why’d they send you? Aren’t there any other cops in that precinct of yours?”

“I’m the boss’s son. I told you that a long time ago.”

“You told me a lot of things a long time ago. Now, go tell your captain I’d prefer talking to another—”

“My lieutenant.”

“Whatever he is. I mean, really, Mr. Kling, I think there’s such a thing as adding insult to injury. The way you treated me when my father was killed—”

“I think there was a great deal of misunderstanding all around at that time, Miss Forrest.”

“Yes, and mostly on your part.”

“We were under pressure. There was a sniper loose in the city—”

“Mr. Kling, most people are under pressure most of the time. It was my understanding that policemen are civil servants, and that—”

“We are, that’s true.”

“Yes, well, you were anything but civil. I have a long memory, Mr. Kling.”

“So do I. Your father’s name was Anthony Forrest, he was the first victim in those sniper killings. Your mother—”

“Look, Mr. Kling—”

“Your mother’s name is Clarice, and you’ve got—”

“Clara.”

“Clara, right, and you’ve got a younger brother named John.”

“Jeff.”

“Jeff, right. You were majoring in education at the time of the shootings—”

“I switched to psychology in my junior year.”

“Downtown at Ramsey University. You were nineteen years old—”

“Almost twenty.”

“—and that was close to three years ago, which makes you twenty-two.”

“I’ll be twenty-two next month.”

“I see you graduated.”

“Yes, I have,” Cindy said curtly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Kling—”

“I’ve been assigned to investigate this complaint, Miss Forrest. Something of this nature is relatively small potatoes in our fair city, so I can positively guarantee the lieutenant won’t put another man on it simply because you don’t happen to like my face.”

“Among other things.”

“Yes, well, that’s too bad. Would you like to tell me what happened here yesterday?”

“I would like to tell you nothing.”

“Don’t you want us to find the man who came up here?”

“I do.”

“Then-”

“Mi. Kling, let me put this as flatly as I can. I don’t like you. I didn’t like you the last time I saw you, and I still don’t like you. I’m afraid I’m just one of those people who never change their minds.”

“Bad failing for a psychologist.”

“I’m not a psychologist yet. I’m going for my master’s at night.”

“The girl outside told me you’re assistant to the company—”

“Yes, I am. But I haven’t yet taken my boards.”

“Are you allowed to practice?”

“According to the law in this state — I thought you just might be familiar with it, Mr. Kling — no one can be licensed to—”

“No, I’m not.”

“Obviously. No one can be licensed to practice psychology until he has a master’s degree and a Ph.D., and has passed the state boards. I’m not practicing. All I do is conduct interviews and sometimes administer tests.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear that,” Kling said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Kling said, and shrugged.

“Look, Mr. Kling, if you stay here a minute longer, we’re going to pick up right where we left off. And as I recall it, the last time I saw you, I told you to drop dead.”

“That’s right.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Can’t,” Kling said. “This is my case.” He smiled pleasantly, sat in the chair beside her desk, made himself comfortable, and very sweetly said, “Do you want to tell me what happened here yesterday, Miss Forrest?”

Lieutenant Peter Byrnes read Kling’s report that Thursday afternoon, and then buzzed the squadroom and asked him to come in. When he arrived, Byrnes offered him a chair (which Kling accepted) and a cigar (which Kling declined) and then lighted his own cigar and blew out a wreath of smoke and said, “What’s this ‘severe distaste for my personality’ business?”

Kling shrugged. “She doesn’t like me, Pete. I can’t say I blame her. I was going through a bad time. Well, what am I telling you for?”

“Mmm,” Byrnes said. He puffed meditatively on his cigar, and then glanced at the report again. “Four teeth knocked out, and three broken ribs,” he said. “Tough customer.”

“Well, Fairchild’s a new cop.”

“I know that. Still, this man doesn’t seem to have much respect for the law, does he?”

“To put it mildly,” Kling said, smiling.

“Your report says he grabbed the Forrest girl by the arm.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t like it, Bert. If this guy can be so casual about beating up a cop, what’ll he do if he gets that girl alone sometime?”

“Well, that’s the thing.”

“I think we ought to get him.”

“Sure, but who is he?”

“Maybe we’ll get a make downtown. From those mugs shots.”

“She promised to call in later, as soon as she’s had a look.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

“Maybe.”

“If we’re not, I think we ought to smoke out this guy. I don’t like cops getting beat up, that’s to begin with. And I don’t like the idea of this guy maybe waiting to jump on that girl. He knocked out four of Fairchild’s teeth and broke three of his ribs. Who knows what he’d do to a helpless little girl?”

“She’s about five-seven, Pete. Actually, that’s pretty big. For a girl, I mean.”

“Still, if we’re not careful here, we may wind up with a homicide on our hands.”

“Well, that’s projecting a little further than I think we have to, Pete.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I think we ought to smoke him out.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m not sure yet. What are you working on right now?”

“Those liquor store holdups. And also an assault.”

“When was the last holdup?”

“Three nights ago.”

“What’s your plan?”

“He seems to be hitting them in a line, Pete, straight up Culver Avenue. I thought I’d plant myself in the next store up the line.”

“You think he’s going to hit again so soon?”

“They’ve been spaced about two weeks apart so far.”

“Then there’s no hurry, right?”

“Well, he may change the timetable.”

“He may change the pattern, too. In which case, you’ll be sitting in the wrong store.”

“That’s true. I just thought—”

“Let it wait. What’s the assault?”

“Victim is a guy named Vinny Marino, he’s a small-time pusher, lives on Ainsley Avenue. About a week ago, two guys pulled up in a car and got out with baseball bats. They broke both his legs. The neighborhood rumble is that he was fooling around with one of their wives. That’s why they went for his legs, you see, so he wouldn’t be able to chase around anymore. It’s only coincidental that he’s a pusher.”

“For my part, they could have killed him,” Byrnes said. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket, blew his nose, and then said, “Mr. Marino’s case can wait, too. I want you to stay with this one, Bert.”

“I think we’d do better with another man. I doubt if I’ll be able to get any cooperation at all from her.”

“Who can I spare?” Byrnes asked. “Willis and Brown are on that knife murder, Hawes is on a plant of his own, Meyer and Carella are on this damn television thing, Andy Parker—”

“Well, maybe I can switch with one of them.”

“I don’t like cases to change hands once they’ve been started.”

“I’ll do whatever you say, Pete, but—”

“I’d appreciate it,” Byrnes said.

“Yes, sir.”

Byrnes puffed on his cigar, and then said, “She claims she doesn’t know him, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought maybe he was an old boyfriend.”

“No.”

“Rejected, you know, that kind of crap.”

“No, not according to her.”

“Maybe he just wants to get in her pants.”

“Maybe.”

“Is she good-looking?”

“She’s attractive, yes. She’s not a raving beauty, but I guess she’s attractive.”

“Then maybe that’s it.”

“Maybe, but why would he go after her in this way?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know any other way. He sounds like a hood, and hoods lake what they want. He doesn’t know from candy or flowers. He sees a pretty girl he wants, so he goes after her — even if it means beating her up to get her. That’s my guess.”

“Maybe.”

“And that’s in our favor. Look what happened to Fairchild when he got in this guy’s way. He knocked out his teeth and broke his ribs. Whatever he wants from this girl — and it’s my guess all he wants is her tail he’s not going to let anybody stop him from getting it, law or otherwise. That’s where you come in.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s how we smoke him out. I don’t want to do anything that’ll put this girl in danger. I want this punk to make his move against you, Bert.”

“Me?”

“You. He knows where she works, and chances are he knows where she lives, and I’ll bet my life he’s watching her every minute of the day. Okay, let’s give him something to watch.”

“Me?” Kling said again.

“You, that’s right. Stay with that girl day and night. Let’s—”

“Day and night?”

“Well, within reason. Let’s get this guy so goddamn sore at you that he comes after you and tries to do exactly what he did to Fairchild.”

Kling smiled, “Gee,” he said, “suppose he succeeds?”

“Fairchild is a new cop,” Byrnes said. “You told me so yourself,”

“Okay, Pete, but you’re forgetting something, aren’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“The girl doesn’t like me. She’s not going to take kindly to the idea of spending time with me.”

“Ask her if she’d rather get raped some night in the elevator after this guy has knocked out her teeth and broken some of her ribs. Ask her that.”

Kling smiled again. “She might prefer it.”

“I doubt it.”

“Pete, she hates me. She really…”

Byrnes smiled. “Win her over, boy,” he said. “Just win her over, that’s all.”

As Kling had anticipated, Cindy Forrest was not overwhelmed by the prospect of having to spend even an infinitesimal amount of time with him. She reluctantly admitted, however, that such a course might be less repulsive than the possibility of spending an equal amount of time in a hospital. It was decided that Kling would pick her up at the office at noon Friday, take her to lunch, and then walk her back again. He reminded her that he was a city employee and that there was no such thing as an expense account for taking citizens to lunch while trying to protect them, a subtlety Cindy looked upon as simply another index to Kling’s personality. Not only was he obnoxious, but he was apparently cheap as well.

Thursday’s beautiful weather had turned foreboding and blustery by Friday noon. The sky above was a solemn gray, the streets seemed dimmer, the people less animated. He picked her up at the office, and they walked in silence to a restaurant some six blocks distant. She was wearing high heels, but the top of her head still came only level with his chin. They were both blond, both hatless. Kling walked with his hands in his coat pockets. Cindy kept her arms crossed over her middle, her hands tucked under them. When they reached the restaurant, Kling forgot to hold open the door for her, but only the faintest flick of Cindy’s blue eyes showed that this was exactly what she expected from a man like him. Too late, he allowed her to precede him into the restaurant.

“I hope you like Italian food,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” she answered, “but you might have asked first.”

“I’m sorry, but I have a few other things on my mind besides worrying about which restaurant you might like.”

“I’m sure you’re a very busy man,” Cindy said.

“I am.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

The owner of the restaurant, a short Neapolitan woman with masses of thick black hair framing her round and pretty face, mistook them for lovers and showed them to a secluded table at the rear of the place. Kling remembered to help Cindy off with her coat (she mumbled a polite thank-you) and then further remembered to hold out the chair for her (she acknowledged this with a brief nod). The waiter took their order and they sat facing each other without a word to say.

The silence lengthened.

“Well, I can see this is going to be perfectly charming,” Cindy said. “Lunch with you for the next God knows how long.”

“There are things I’d prefer doing myself, Miss Forrest,” Kling said. “but as you pointed out yesterday, I am only a civil servant. I do what I’m told to do.”

“Does Carella still work up there?” Cindy asked.

“Yes.”

“I’d much rather be having lunch with him.”

“Well, those are the breaks,” Kling said. “Besides, he’s married.”

“I know he is.”

“In fact, he’s got two kids.”

“I know.”

“Mmm. Well, I’m sure he’d have loved this choice assignment, but unfortunately he’s involved with a poisoning at the moment.”

“Who got poisoned?”

“Stan Gilford.”

“Oh? Is he working on that? I was reading about it in the paper just yesterday.”

“Yes, it’s his case.”

“He must be a good detective. I mean, to get such an important case.”

“Yes, he’s very good,” Kling said.

The table went silent again. Kling glanced over his shoulder toward the door, where a thickset man in a black overcoat was just entering.

“Is that your friend?” he asked.

“No. And he’s not my friend.”

“The lieutenant thought he might have been one of your ex-boyfriends.”

“No.”

“Or someone you’d met someplace.”

“No.”

“You’re sure you didn’t recognize any of those mug shots yesterday?”

“I’m positive. I don’t know who the man is, and I can’t imagine what he wants from me.”

“Well, the lieutenant had some ideas about that, too.”

“What were his ideas?”

“Well, I’d rather not discuss them.”

“Why not?”

“Because… well, I’d just rather not.”

“Is it the lieutenant’s notion that this man wants to lay me?” Cindy asked.

“What?”

“I said is it the—”

“Yes, something like that,” Kling answered, and then cleared his throat.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Cindy said.

The waiter arrived at that moment, sparing Kling the necessity of further comment. Cindy had ordered the antipasto to start, a supposed specialty of the house. Kling had ordered a cup of minestrone. He carefully waited for her to begin eating before he picked up his spoon.

“How is it?” he asked her.

“Very good.” She paused. “How’s the soup?”

“Fine.”

They ate in silence for several moments.

“What is the plan exactly?” Cindy asked.

“The lieutenant thinks your admirer is something of a hothead, a reasonable assumption, I would say. He’s hoping we’ll be seen together, and he’s hoping our man will take a crack at me.”

“In which case?”

“In which case I will crack him back and carry him off to jail.”

“My hero,” Cindy said dryly, and attacked an anchovy on her plate.

“I’m supposed to spend as much time with you as I can,” Kling said, and paused. “I guess we’ll be having dinner together tonight.”

“What?”

“Yes,” Kling said.

“Look, Mr. Kling—”

“It’s not my idea, Miss Forrest.”

“Suppose I’ve made other plans?”

“Have you?”

“No, but—”

“Then there’s no problem.”

“I don’t usually go out for dinner, Mr. Kling, unless someone is escorting me.”

“I’ll be escorting you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m a working girl. I can’t afford—”

“Well, I’m sorry about the financial arrangements, but as I explained—”

“Yes, well, you just tell your lieutenant I can’t afford a long, leisurely dinner every night, that’s all. I earn a hundred and two dollars a week after taxes, Mr. Kling. I pay my own college tuition and the rent on my own apartment—”

“Well, this shouldn’t take too long. If our man spots us, he may make his play fairly soon. In the meantime, we’ll just have to go along with it. Have you seen the new Hitchcock movie?”

“What?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I thought we’d go see it after dinner.”

“Why?”

“Got to stay together.” Kling paused. “I could suggest a long walk as an alternative, but it might be pretty chilly by tonight.”

“I could suggest your going directly home after dinner,” Cindy said. “As an alternative, you understand. Because to tell the truth, Mr. Kling, I’m pretty damned tired by the end of a working day. In fact, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I barely have time to grab a hamburger before I run over to the school. I’m not a rah-rah party girl. I think you ought to understand that.”

“Lieutenant’s orders,” Kling said.

“Yeah, well, tell him to go see the new Hitchcock movie. I’ll have dinner with you, if you insist, but right after that I’m going to bed.” Cindy paused. “And I’m not suggesting that as an alternative.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Just so we know where we stand.”

“I know exactly where we stand,” Kling said. “There are a lot of people in this city, Miss Forrest, and one of them is the guy who’s after you. I don’t know how long it’ll take to smoke him out, I don’t know when or where he’ll spot us. But I do know he’s not going to see us together if you’re safe and cozy in your little bed and I’m safe and cozy in mine.” Kling took a deep breath. “So what we’re going to do, Miss Forrest, is have dinner together tonight, and then see the Hitchcock movie. And then we’ll go for coffee and something afterward, and then I’ll take you home. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so we can plan on a nice long day together. Sunday, too. On Monday—”

“Oh God,” Cindy said.

“You said it,” Kling answered. “Cheer up, here comes your lasagna.”

He had followed them to the restaurant and the movie theater, and now he stood in the doorway across from her house, waiting for her to come home. It was a cold night, and he stood huddled deep in the shadows, his coat collar pulled high on the back of his neck, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, his hat low on his forehead.

It was ten minutes past twelve, and they had left the movie theater at eleven forty-five, but he knew they would be coming straight home. He had been watching the girl long enough now to know a few things about her, and one of those things was that she didn’t sleep around much. Last month sometime, she had shacked up with a guy on Banning Street, just for the night, and the next morning after she left the apartment he had gone up to the guy and had worked him over with a pair of brass knuckles, leaving him crying like a baby on the kitchen floor. He had warned the guy against calling the police, and he had also told him he should never go near Cindy Forrest again, never try to see her again, never even try to call her again. The guy had held his broken mouth together with one bloody hand, and nodded his head, and begged not to be hit again — that was one guy who wouldn’t be bothering her anymore. So he knew she didn’t sleep around too much, and besides he knew she wouldn’t be going anyplace but straight home with this blond guy because this blond guy was a cop.

He had got the fuzz smell from him almost the minute he first saw him, early this afternoon when he came to the office to take her to lunch. He knew the look of fuzz and the smell of fuzz, and he realized right off that the very smart bulls of this wonderful city were setting a trap for him, and that he was supposed to fall right into it — here I am, fuzz, take me.

Like fun.

He had stayed far away from the restaurant where they had lunch, getting the fuzz stink sharp and clear in his nostrils and knowing something was up, but not knowing what kind of trap was being set for him, and wanting to make damn sure before he made another move. The blond guy walked like a cop, that was an unmistakable cop walk. And also he had a sneaky way of making the scene, his head turned in one direction while he was really casing the opposite direction, a very nice fuzz trick that known criminals sometimes utilized, but that mostly cops from here to Detroit and back again were very familiar with. Well, he had known cops all across this fine little country of America, he had busted more cops’ head than he could count on all his fingers and toes. He wouldn’t mind busting another, just for the fun of it, but not until he knew what the trap was. The one thing he wasn’t going to do was walk into no trap.

In the wintertime, or like now when it was getting kind of chilly and a guy had to wear a coat, you could always tell when he was heeled because if he was wearing a shoulder harness, the button between the top one and the third one was always left unbuttoned. If he was wearing the holster clipped to his belt, then a button was left undone just above the waist, so the right hand could reach in and draw — that was the first concrete tip-off that Blondie was a cop. He was a cop, and he wore his gun clipped to his belt. Watching him from outside the plate-glass window of the second restaurant later that day, there had been the Hash of Blondie’s tin when he went to pay his check, opening his wallet, with the shield catching light for just a second. That was the second concrete fact, and a smart man don’t need more than one or two facts to piece together a story, not when the fuzz smell is all over the place to begin with.

The only thing he didn’t know now was what the trap was, and whether or not he should accommodate Blondie by walking into it and maybe beating him up. He thought it would be better to work on the girl, though. It was time the girl learned what she could do and couldn’t do, there was no sense putting it off. The girl had to know that she couldn’t go sleeping around with no guys on Banning Street, or for that matter anyplace in the city. And she also had to know she couldn’t play along with the cops on whatever trap they were cooking up. She had to know it now, and once and for all, because he wasn’t planning on staying in the shadows for long. The girl had to know she was his meal and his alone.

He guessed he’d beat her up tonight.

He looked at his watch again. It was fifteen minutes past twelve, and he began to wonder what was keeping them. Maybe he should have stuck with them when they came out of the movie house, instead of rushing right over here. Still, if Blondie—

A car was turning into the street.

He pulled back into the shadows and waited. The car came up the street slowly. Come on, Blondie, he thought, you ain’t being followed, there’s no reason to drive so slow. He grinned in the darkness. The car pulled to the curb. Blondie got out and walked around to the other side, holding open the door for the girl, and then walking her up the front steps. The building was a gray four-story job, and the girl lived on the top floor rear. The name on the bell read “C. Forrest,” that was the first thing he’d found out about her, almost two months ago. A little while after that, he’d broken open the lock on her mailbox and found two letters addressed to Miss Cynthia Forrest — it was a good thing she wasn’t married, because if she was, her husband would have been in for one hell of a time — and another letter addressed to Miss Cindy Forrest, this one from a guy over in Thailand, serving with the Peace Corps. The guy was lucky he was over in Thailand, or he’d have had a visitor requesting him to stop writing letters to little Sweet-pants.

Blondie was unlocking the inner vestibule door for her now. The girl said good night — he could hear her voice clear across the street — and Blondie gave her the keys and said something with his back turned, which couldn’t be heard. Then the door closed behind her, and Blondie came down the steps, walking with a funny fuzz walk, like a boxer moving toward the ring where a pushover sparring partner was waiting, and keeping his head ducked, though this was a cop trick and those eyes were most likely flashing up and down the street in either direction even though the head was ducked and didn’t seem to be turning. Blondie got into the car — the engine was still running — put it into gear, and drove off.

He waited.

In five minutes’ time, the car pulled around the corner again and drifted slowly past the gray building.

He almost burst out laughing. What did Blondie think he was playing around with, an amateur? He waited until the car rounded the corner again, and then he waited for at least another fifteen minutes, until he was sure Blondie wasn’t coming back.

He crossed the street rapidly then, and walked around the corner and into the building directly behind the girl’s. He went straight through the building, opening the door at the rear of the ground floor and stepping out into the backyard. He climbed the clothesline pole near the fence separating the yard from the one behind it, leaped over the fence, and dropped to his knees. Looking up, he could see a light burning in the girl’s window on the fourth floor. He walked toward the rear of the building, cautiously but easily, jumping up for the fire-escape ladder, pulling it down, and then swinging up onto it and beginning to climb. He went by each window with great care, especially the other lighted one on the second floor, flitting past it like a shadow and continuing on up to the third floor, and then stepping onto the fourth-floor fire escape, her fire escape.

There was a wooden cheese box resting on the iron slats of the fire-escape floor, the dried twigs of dead flowers stuck into the stiff earth it contained. The fire escape was outside her bedroom. He peered around the edge of the window, but the room was empty. He glanced to his right and saw that the tiny bathroom window was lighted; the girl was in the bathroom. He debated going right into the bedroom while she was occupied down the hall, but decided against it. He wanted to wait until she was in bed. He wanted to scare her real good.

The only light in the room came from a lamp on the night table near the girl’s bed. The bed was clearly visible from where he crouched outside on the fire escape. There was a single chair on this side of the bed, he would have to avoid that in the dark. He wanted his surprise to be complete; he didn’t want to go stumbling over no furniture and waking her up before it was time. The window was open just a trifle at the top, probably to let in some air, she’d probably opened it when she came into the apartment. He didn’t know whether or not she’d close andd lock it before going to bed, maybe she would. This was a pretty decent neighborhood, though, without any incidents lately — he’d checked on that because he was afraid some cheap punk might bust into the girl’s apartment and complicate things for him — so maybe she slept with the window open just a little, at the top, the way it was now. While she was in the bathroom, he studied the simple lock on the sash and decided it wouldn’t be a problem, anyway, even if she locked it.

The bathroom light went out suddenly.

He flattened himself against the brick wall of the building. The girl was humming when she came into the room. The humming trailed off abruptly, she was turning on the radio. It came on very loud, for Christ’s sake, she was going to wake up the whole damn building! She kept twisting the dial until she found the station she wanted, sweet music, lots of violins and muted trumpets, and then she lowered the volume. He waited. In a moment, she came to the window and pulled down the shade. Good, he thought, she didn’t lock the window. He waited a moment longer, and then flattened himself onto the fire escape so that he could peer into the room beneath the lower edge of the shade, where the girl had left a good two-inch gap between it and the windowsill.

The girl was still dressed. She was wearing the tan dress she had worn to dinner with Blondie, but when she turned away and began walking toward the closet, he saw that she had already lowered the zipper at the back. The dress was spread in a wide V, the white elastic line of her brassiere crossing her back, the zipper lowered to a point just above the beginning curve of her buttocks. The radio was playing a song she knew, and she began humming along with it again as she opened the closet door and took her nightgown from a hook. She closed the door and then walked to the bed, sitting on the side facing the window and lifting her dress up over her thighs to unhook first one garter and then the other. She took off her shoes and rolled down her stockings, and then walked to the closet to put the shoes away and to put the stockings into some kind of a bag hanging on the inside doorknob. She closed the door again, and then took off her dress, standing just outside the closet and not moving toward the bed again. In her bra and half-slip, she walked over to the other side of the room, where he couldn’t see her anymore, almost as if the lousy little bitch knew he was watching her! She was still humming. His hands were wet. He dried them on the sleeves of his coat and waited.

She came back so suddenly that she startled him. She had taken off her underwear, and she walked swiftly to the bed, naked, to pick up her nightgown. Jesus, she was beautiful! Jesus, he hadn’t realized how goddamn beautiful she really was. He watched her as she bent slightly to pull the gown over her head, straightened, and then let it fall down over her breasts and her tilted hips. She yawned. She looked at her watch and then went across the room again, out of sight, and came back to the bed carrying a paperback book. She got into the bed, her legs parting, opening, as she swung up onto it, and then pulled the blanket up over her knees, and fluffed the pillow, and scratched her jaw, and opened the book. She yawned. She looked at her watch again, seemed to change her mind about reading the book, put it down on the night table, and yawned again.

A moment later, she turned out the light.

The first thing she heard was the voice.

It said “Cindy,” and for the briefest tick of time she thought she was dreaming because the voice was just a whisper. And then she heard it again, “Cindy,” hovering somewhere just above her face, and her eyes popped wide, and she tried to sit up but something pressed her fiercely back against the pillow. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over her lips. She stared over the edge of the thick fingers into the darkness, trying to see. “Be quiet, Cindy,” the voice said. “Just be quiet now.”

His grip on her mouth was hard and tight. He was straddling her now, his knees on the bed, his legs tight against her pinioned arms, sitting on her abdomen, one arm flung across her chest, holding her to the pillow.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

She nodded. His hand stayed tight on her mouth, hurting her. She wanted to bite his hand, but she could not free her mouth. His weight upon her was unbearable. She tried to move, but she was helplessly caught in the vise of his knees, the tight band of his arm thrown across her chest.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

She believed him instantly; terror rocketed into her skull. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. She could dimly see his grinning face hovering above her. His fingers smelled of tobacco. He kept his right hand clamped over her mouth, his left arm thrown across her chest, lower now, so that the hand was gripping her breast. He kept working his hand as he talked to her, grasping her through the thin nylon gown, squeezing her nipple as his voice continued in a slow lazy monotone, “Do you know why I’m going to beat you, Cindy?”

She tried to shake her head, but his hand was so tight against her mouth that she could not move. She knew she would begin to cry within the next few moments. She was trembling beneath his weight. His hand was cruel on her breast. Each time he tightened it on her nipple, she winced with pain.

“I don’t like you to go out with cops,” he said. “I don’t like you to go out with anybody, but cops especially.”

She could see his face clearly now. He was the same man who had come to the office, the same man who had beaten up the policeman. She remembered the way he had kicked the policeman when he was on the floor, and she began trembling more violently. She heard him laugh.

“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now,” he said, “because we have to talk. But if you scream, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

She tried to nod. His hand was relaxing. He was slowly lifting it from her mouth, cupped, as though cautiously peering under it to see if he had captured a fly. She debated screaming, and knew at once that if she did he would keep his promise and kill her. He shifted his body to the left, relaxing his grip across her chest, lifting his arm, freeing her breast. He rested his hands palms downward on his thighs, his leg’s bent under him, his knees still holding her arms tightly against her side, most of his weight still on her abdomen. Her breast was throbbing with pain. A trickle of sweat rolled down toward her belly and she thought for a moment it was blood, had he made her bleed somehow? A new wave of fear caused her to begin trembling again. She was ashamed of herself for being so frightened, but the fear was something uncontrollable, a raw animal panic that shrieked silently of pain and possible death.

“You’ll gel rid of him tomorrow,” he whispered. He sat straddling her with his huge hands relaxed on his own thighs.

“Who?” she said. “Who do you—”

“The cop. You’ll get rid of him tomorrow.”

“All right.” She nodded in the darkness. “All right,” she said again.

“You’ll ring his precinct — what precinct is it?”

“The 8… the 87th, I think.”

“You’ll call him.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

“You’ll tell him you don’t need a police escort no more. You’ll tell him everything is all right now.”

“Yes, all right,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

“You’ll tell him you patched things up with your boyfriend.”

“My…” She paused. Her heart was beating wildly, she was sure he could feel her heart beating in panic. “My boyfriend?”

“Me,” he said, and grinned.

“I… I don’t even know you,” she said.

“I’m your boyfriend.”

She shook her head.

“I’m your lover.”

She kept shaking her head.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know you,” she said, and suddenly she began weeping. “What do you want from me? Please, won’t you go? Won’t you please leave me alone? I don’t even know you. Please, please.”

“Beg,” he said, and grinned.

“Please, please, please…”

“You’re going to tell him to stop coming around.”

“Yes, I am. I said I would.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“You’ll keep the promise,” he said flatly.

“Yes, I will. I told you—”

He slapped her suddenly and fiercely, his right hand abruptly leaving his thigh and coming up viciously toward her face. She blinked her eyes an instant before his open palm collided with her cheek. She pulled back rigidly, her neck muscles taut, her eyes wide, her teeth clamped together.

“You’ll keep the promise,” he said, “because this is a sample of what you’ll get if you don’t.”

And then he began beating her.

She did not know where she was at first. She tried to open her eyes, but something was wrong with them, she could not seem to open her eyes. Something rough was against her cheek, her head was twisted at a curious angle. She felt a hundred separate throbbing areas of hurt, but none of them seemed connected with her head or her body, each seemed to pulse with a solitary intensity of its own. Her left eye trembled open. Light knifed into the narrow crack of opening eyelid, she could open it no further. Light flickered into the tentative opening, flashes of light pulsated as the flesh over her eye quivered.

She was lying with her cheek pressed to the rug.

She kept trying to open her left eye, catching fitful glimpses of gray carpet as the eye opened and closed spasmodically, still not knowing where she was, possessing a sure knowledge that something terrible had happened to her, but not remembering what it was as yet. She lay quite still on the floor, feeling each throbbing knot of pain, arms, legs, thighs, breasts, nose, the separate pains combining to form a recognizable mass of flesh that was her body, a whole and unified body that had been severely beaten.

And then, of course, she remembered instantly what had happened.

Her first reaction was one of whimpering terror. She drew up her shoulders, trying to pull her head deeper into them. Her left hand came limply toward her face, the fingers fluttering, as though weakly trying to fend off any further blows.

“Please,” she said.

The word whispered into the room. She waited for him to strike her again, every part of her body tensed for another savage blow, and when none came, she lay trembling lest she was mistaken, fearful that he was only pretending to be gone while silently waiting to attack again.

Her eye kept flickering open and shut.

She rolled over onto her back and tried to open the other eye, but again only a crack of winking light came through the trembling lid. The ceiling seemed so very far away. Sobbing, she brought her hand to her nose, thinking it was running, wiping it with the back of her hand, and then realizing that blood was pouring from her nostrils.

“Oh,” she said, “oh my God.”

She lay on her back, sobbing in anguish. At last, she tried to rise. She made it to her knees, and then fell to the floor again, sprawled on her face. The police, she thought, I must call the police. And then she remembered why he had beaten her. He did not want the police. Get rid of the police, he had said. She got to her knees again. Her gown was torn down the front. Her breasts were splotched with purple bruises. The nipple of her right breast looked as raw as an open wound. Her throat, the torn gown, the sloping tops of her breasts were covered with blood from her nose. She cupped her hand under it, and then tried to stop the flow by holding a torn shred of nylon under the nostrils, struggling to her feet and moving unsteadily toward her dressing table, where she knew she’d left her house keys, Kling had returned her house keys, she had left them on the dresser, she would put them at the back of her neck, they would stop the blood, groping for the dresser top, a severe pain on the side of her chest, had he kicked her the way he’d kicked that policeman, get rid of the police, oh my God, oh God, oh God dear God.

She could not believe what she saw in the mirror.

The image that stared back at her was grotesque and frightening, hideous beyond belief. Her eyes were puffed and swollen, the pupils invisible, only a narrow slit showing on the bursting surface of each discolored bulge. Her face was covered with blood and bruises, a swollen mass of purple lumps, her blond hair was matted with blood, there were welts on her arms, and thighs, and legs.

She felt suddenly dizzy. She clutched the top of the dressing table to steady herself, taking her hand away from her nose momentarily, watching the falling drops of blood spatter onto the white surface. A wave of nausea came and passed. She stood with her hand pressed to the top of the table, leaning on her extended arm, her head bent, refusing to look into the mirror again. She must not call the police. If she called the police, he would come back and do this to her again. He had told her to get rid of the police, she would call Kling in the morning and tell him everything was all right now, she and her boyfriend had patched it up. In utter helplessness, she began crying again, her shoulders heaving, her nose dripping blood, her knees shaking as she clung to the dressing table for support.

Gasping for breath, she stood suddenly erect and opened her mouth wide, sucking in great gulps of air, her hand widespread over her belly like an open fan. Her fingers touched something wet and sticky, and she looked down sharply, expecting more blood, expecting to find herself soaked in blood that seeped from a hundred secret wounds.

She raised her hand slowly toward her swollen eyes.

She fainted when she realized the wet and sticky substance on her belly was semen.

Bert Kling kicked down the door of her apartment at ten-thirty the next morning. He had begun trying to reach her at nine, wanting to work out the details of their day together. He had let the phone ring seven times, and then decided he’d dialed the wrong number. He hung up, and tried it again. This time, he let it ring for a total of ten times, just in case she was a heavy sleeper. There was no answer. At nine-thirty, hoping she had gone down for breakfast and returned to the apartment by now, he called once again. There was still no answer. He called at five-minute intervals until ten o’clock, and then clipped on his gun and went down to his car. It took him a half hour to drive from Riverhead to Cindy’s apartment on Glazebrook Street. He climbed the steps to the fourth floor, knocked on the door, called her name, and then kicked it open.

He phoned for an ambulance immediately.

She regained consciousness briefly before the ambulance arrived. When she recognized him, she mumbled, “No, please, get out of here, he’ll know,” and then passed out again.

Elizabeth Rushmore Hospital was on the southern rim of the city, a complex of tall white buildings that faced the River Dix. From the hospital windows, one could watch the river traffic, could see in the distance the smokestacks puffing up black clouds, could follow the spidery strands of the three bridges that connected the island to Sands, Spit, Calm’s Point, and Majesta.

A cold wind was blowing off the water. He had called the hospital earlier that afternoon and learned that evening visiting hours ended at eight o’clock. It was now seven forty-five, and he stood on the river’s edge with his coat collar raised, and looked up at the lighted hospital windows and once again went over his plan.

He had thought at first that the whole thing was a cheap cop trick. He had listened attentively while Buddy told him about the visit of the blond cop, the same son of a bitch; Buddy said his name was Kling, Detective Bert Kling. Holding the phone receiver to his ear, he had listened, and his hand had begun sweating on the black plastic. But he had told himself all along that it was only a crumby trick, did they think he was going to fall for such a cheap stunt?

Still, they had known his name; Kling had asked for Cookie. How could they have known his name unless there really was a file someplace listing guys who were involved with numbers? And hadn’t Kling mentioned something about not being able to locate him at the address they had for him in the file? If anything sounded legit, that sure as hell did. He had moved two years ago, so maybe the file went back before then. And besides, he hadn’t been home for the past few days, so even if the file was a recent one, well then, they wouldn’t have been able to locate him at his address because he simply hadn’t been there. So maybe there was some truth in it, who the hell knew?

But a picture? Where would they have gotten a picture of him? Well, that was maybe possible. If the cops really did have such a file, then maybe they also had a picture. He knew goddamn well that they took pictures all the time, mostly trying to get a line on guys in narcotics, but maybe they did it for numbers, too. He had seen laundry trucks or furniture vans parked in the same spot on a street all day long, and had known — together with everybody else in the neighborhood — that it was cops taking pictures. So maybe it was possible they had a picture of him, too. And maybe that little bitch had really pointed him out, maybe so, it was a possibility. But it still smelled a little, there were still too many unanswered questions.

Most of the questions were answered for him when he read the story in the afternoon paper. He’d almost missed it because he had started from the back of the paper, where the racing results were, and then had only turned to the front afterward, sort of killing time. The story confirmed that there was a file on numbers racketeers, for one thing, though he was pretty sure about that even before he’d seen the paper. It also explained why Fairchild couldn’t make the identification, too. You can’t be expected to look at a picture of somebody when you’re laying in the hospital with a coma. He didn’t think he’d hit the bastard that hard, but maybe he didn’t know his own strength. Just to check he’d called Buena Vista as soon as he’d read the story and asked how Patrolman Fairchild was doing. They told him he was still in a coma and on the critical list, so that part of it was true. And, of course, if those jerks in the office where Cindy worked were too scared to identify the picture, well then, Fairchild’s condition explained why Cindy was the only person the cops could bank on.

The word “homicide” had scared him. If that son of a bitch did die, and if the cops picked him up and Cindy said, yes, that’s the man, well, that was it, pal. He thought he’d really made it clear to her, but maybe she was tougher than he thought. For some strange reason, the idea excited him, the idea of her not having been frightened by the beating, of her still having the guts to identify his picture and promise to testily. He could remember being excited when he read the story, and the same excitement overtook him now as he looked up at the hospital windows and went over his plan.

Visiting hours ended at eight o’clock, which meant he had exactly ten minutes to get into the building. He wondered suddenly if they would let him in so close to the deadline, and he immediately began walking toward the front entrance. A wide slanting concrete canopy covered the revolving entrance doors. The hospital was new, an imposing edifice of aluminum and glass and concrete. He pushed through the revolving doors and walked immediately to the desk on the right of the entrance lobby. A woman in white — he supposed she was a nurse — looked up as he approached.

“Miss Cynthia Forrest?” he said.

“Room seven-twenty,” the woman said, and immediately looked at her watch. “Visiting hours are over in a few minutes, you know,” she said.

“Yes, I know, thanks,” he answered, and smiled, and walked swiftly to the elevator bank. There was only one other civilian waiting for an elevator; the rest were all hospital people in white uniforms. He wondered abruptly if there would be a cop on duty outside her door. Well, if there is, he thought, I just call it off, that’s all. The elevator doors opened. He stepped in with the other people, pushed the button for the seventh floor, noticed that one of the nurses reached for the same button after he had pushed it, and then withdrew quietly to the rear of the elevator. The doors closed.

“If you ask me,” a nurse was saying, “it’s psoriasis. Dr. Kirsch said it’s blood poisoning, but did you see that man’s leg? You can’t tell me that’s from blood poisoning.”

“Well, they’re going to test him tomorrow,” another nurse said.

“In the meantime, he’s got a fever of a hundred and two.”

“That’s from the swollen leg. The leg’s all infected, you know.”

“Psoriasis,” the first nurse said, “that’s what it is,” and the doors opened. Both nurses stepped out. The doors closed again. The elevator was silent. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eight. The elevator stopped again at the fourth floor, and again at the fifth. On the seventh floor, he got off the elevator with the nurse who had earlier reached for the same button. He hesitated in the corridor for a moment. There was a wide-open area directly in front of the elevators. Beyond that was a large room with a bank of windows, the sun-room, he supposed. To the right and left of the elevators were glass doors leading to the patients’ rooms beyond. A nurse sat at a desk some three feet before the doors on the left. He walked swiftly to the desk and said, “Which way is seven-twenty?”

The nurse barely looked up. “Straight through,” she said. “You’ve only got a few minutes.”

“Yes, I know, thanks,” he said, and pushed open the glass door. The room just inside the partition was 700, and the one beyond that was 702, so he assumed 720 was somewhere at the end of the hall. He looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. He hastily scanned the doors in the corridor, walking rapidly, finding the one marked “Men” halfway down the hall. Pushing open the door, he walked immediately to one of the stalls, entered it, and locked it behind him. In less than a minute, he heard a loudspeaker announcing that visiting hours were now over. He smiled, lowered the toilet seat, sat, lighted a cigarette, and began his long wait.

He did not come out of the men’s room until midnight. By that time, he had listened to a variety of patients and doctors as they discussed the endless variety of ills and ailments, both subjectively and objectively. He listened to each of them quietly and with some amusement because they helped to pass the time. He had reasoned that he could not make his move until the hospital turned out the lights in all the rooms. He didn’t know what time taps was in this crumby place, but he supposed it would be around ten or ten-thirty. He had decided to wait until midnight, just to be sure. He figured that all of the visiting doctors would be gone by that time, and so he knew he had to be careful when he came out into the corridor. He didn’t want anyone to stop him or even to see him on the way to Cindy’s room.

It was a shame he would have to kill the little bitch.

She could have really been something.

There was a guy who came back to pee a total of seventeen times between eight o’clock and midnight. He knew because the guy was evidently having some kind of kidney trouble, and every time he came into the John he would walk over to the urinals — the sound of his shuffling slippers carrying into the locked stall — and then he would begin cursing out loud while he peed, “Oh, you son of a bitch! Oh, what did I do to deserve such pain and misery?” and like that. One time, while he was peeing, some other guy yelled out from the stall alongside, “For God’s sake, Mandel, keep your sickness to yourself.”

And then the guy standing at the urinals had yelled back, “It should happen to you, Liebowitz! It should rot, and fall off of you, and be washed down the drain into the river, may God hear my plea!”

He had almost burst out laughing, but instead he lighted another cigarette and looked at his watch again, and wondered what time they’d be putting all these sick jerks to bed, and wondered what Cindy would be wearing. He could still remember her undressing that night he’d beat her up, the quick flash of her nudity — he stopped his thoughts, he could not think that way. He had to kill her tonight, there was no sense thinking about — and yet maybe while he was doing it, maybe it would be like last time, maybe with her belly smooth and hard beneath him, maybe like last time maybe he could.

The men’s room was silent at midnight.

He unlocked the stall and came out into the room and then walked past the sinks to the door and opened it just a bit and looked out into the corridor. The floors were some kind of hard polished asphalt tile, and you could hear the clicking of high heels on it for a mile, which was good. He listened as a nurse went swiftly down the corridor, her heels clicking away, and then he listened until everything was quiet again. Quickly, he stepped out into the hall. He began walking toward the end of the corridor, the steadily mounting door numbers flashing by on left and right, 709, 710, 711 … 714, 715, 716…

He was passing the door to room 717 on his left, when it opened and a nurse stepped into the corridor. He was too startled to speak at first. He stopped dead, breathless, debating whether he should hit her. And then, from somewhere, he heard a voice saying, “Good evening, Nurse,” and he hardly recognized the voice as his own because it sounded so cultured and pleasant and matter-of-fact. The nurse looked at him for just a moment longer, and then smiled and said, “Good evening, Doctor,” and continued walking down the corridor. He did not turn to look back at her. He continued walking until he came to room 720. Hoping it was a private room, he opened the door, stepped inside quickly, closed the door immediately, and leaned against it, listening. He could hear nothing in the corridor outside. Satisfied, he turned into the room.

The only light in the room came from the windows at the far end, just beyond the bed. He could see the silhouette of her body beneath the blankets, the curved hip limned by the dim light coming from the window. The blanket was pulled high over her shoulders and the back of her neck, but he could see the short blond hair illuminated by the dim glow of moonlight from the windows. He was getting excited again, the way he had that night he beat her up. He reminded himself why he was here — this girl could send him to the electric chair. If Fairchild died, this girl was all they needed to convict him. He took a deep breath and moved toward the bed.

In the near darkness, he reached for her throat, seized it between his huge hands, and then whispered, “Cindy,” because he wanted her to be awake and looking straight up into his face when he crushed the life out of her. His hands tightened.

She sat erect suddenly. Two fists flew up between his own hands, up and outward, breaking the grip. His eyes opened wide.

“Surprise!” Bert Kling said, and punched him in the mouth.

“Why’d you beat her up?” Kling asked.

“I didn’t beat up nobody,” Cookie said. “I love that girl.”

“You what?”

“I love her, you deaf? I loved her from the first minute I ever seen her.”

“When was that?”

“The end of the summer. August. It was on the Stem. I just made a collection in a candy store on the corner there, and I was passing this Pokerino place in the middle of the block, and I thought maybe I’d stop in, kill some time, you know? The guy outside was giving his spiel, and I was standing there listening to him, so many games for a quarter, or whatever the hell it was. I looked in and there was this girl in a dark green dress, leaning over one of the tables and rolling the balls, I think she had something like three queens, I’m not sure.”

“All right, what happened then?”

“I went in.”

“Go ahead.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to know why you beat her up.”

“I didn’t beat her up, I told you that!”

“Who’d you think was in that bed tonight, you son of a bitch?”

“I didn’t know who was in it. Leave me alone. You got nothing on me, you think I’m some snot-nosed kid?”

“Yeah, I think you’re some snot-nosed kid,” Kling said. “What happened that first night you saw her?”

“Nothing. There was a guy with her, a young guy, one of these advertising types. I kept watching her, that’s all. She didn’t know I was watching her, she didn’t even know I existed. Then I followed them when they left, and found out where she lived, and after that I kept following her wherever she went. That’s all.”

‘‘That’s not all.”

“I’m telling you that’s all.”

“Okay, play it your way,” Kling said. “Be a wise guy. We’ll throw everything but the goddamn kitchen sink at you.”

“I’m telling you I never laid a finger on her. I went up to her office to let her know, that’s all.”

“Let her know what?”

“That she was my girl. That, you know, she wasn’t supposed to go out with nobody else or see nobody, that she was mine, you dig? That’s the only reason I went up there, to let her know. I didn’t expect all that kind of goddamn trouble. All I wanted to do was tell her what I expected from her, that’s all.”

John “Cookie” Cacciatore lowered his head. The brim of his hat hid his eyes from Kling’s gaze.

“If you’d all have minded your own business, everything would have been all right.”

The squadroom was silent.

“I love that girl,” he said.

And then, in a mumble, “You lousy bastard, you almost killed me tonight.”

Morning always comes.

In the morning, Detective Bert Kling went to Elizabeth Rushmore Hospital and asked to see Cynthia Forrest. He knew this was not the normal visiting time, but he explained that he was a working detective, and asked that an allowance be made. Since everyone in the hospital knew that he was the cop who’d captured a hoodlum on the seventh floor the night before, there was really no need to explain. Permission was granted at once.

Cindy was sitting up in bed.

She turned her head toward the door as Kling came in, and then her hand went unconsciously to her short blond hair, fluffing it.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello.”

“How do you feel?”

“All right.” She touched her eyes gingerly. “Has the swelling gone down?”

“Yes.”

“But they’re still discolored, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are. You look all right, though.”

“Thank you.” Cindy paused. “Did… did he hurt you last night?”

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, I m sure.”

“He’s a vicious person.”

“I know he is.”

“Will he go to jail?”

“To prison, yes. Even without your testimony. He assaulted a police officer.” Kling smiled. “Tried to strangle me, in fact. That’s attempted murder.”

“I’m… I’m very frightened of that man,” Cindy said.

“Yes, I can imagine.”

“But…” She swallowed. “But if it’ll help the case, I’ll… I’d be willing to testify. If it’ll help, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Kling said. “The D.A.’s office’ll have to let us know about that.”

“All right,” Cindy said, and was silent. Sunlight streamed through the windows, catching her blond hair. She lowered her eyes. Her hand picked nervously at the blanket. “The only thing I’m afraid of is… is when he gets out. Eventually, I mean. When he gets out.”

“Well, we’ll see that you have police protection,” Kling said.

“Mmm,” Cindy said. She did not seem convinced.

“I mean… I’ll personally volunteer for the job,” Kling said, and hesitated.

Cindy raised her eyes to meet his. “That’s… very kind of you,” she said slowly.

“Well…” he answered, and shrugged.

The room was silent.

“You could have got hurt last night,” Cindy said.

“No. No, there wasn’t a chance.”

“You could have,” she insisted.

“No, really.”

“Yes,” she said.

“We’re not going to start arguing again, are we?”

“No,” she said, and laughed, and then winced and touched her face. “Oh God,” she said, “it still hurts.”

“But only when you laugh, right?”

“Yes,” she said, and laughed again.

“When do you think you’ll be out of here?” Kling asked.

“I don’t know. Tomorrow, I suppose. Or the day after.”

“Because I thought…”

“Yes?”

“Well …”

“What is it, Detective Kling?”

“I know you’re a working girl…”

“Yes?”

“And that you don’t normally eat out.”

“That’s right, I don’t,” Cindy said.

“Unless you’re escorted.”

Cindy waited.

“I thought…”

She waited.

“I thought you’d like to have dinner with me sometime. When you’re out of the hospital, I mean.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’d pay for it,” Kling said, and lapsed into silence.

Cindy did not answer for several moments. Then she smiled and said simply, “I’d love to,” and paused, and immediately said, “When?”

Eighty Million Eyes, 1966

Bert Kling was in love.

It was not a good time of the year to be in love. It is better to be in love when flowers are blooming and balmy breezes are wafting in off the river, and strange animals come up to lick your hand. There’s only one good thing about being in love in March, and that’s that it’s better to be in love in March than not to be in love at all, as the wise man once remarked.

Bert Kling was madly in love.

He was madly in love with a girl who was twenty-three years old, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blond hair long and trailing midway down her back or sometimes curled into a honey conch shell at the back of her head, her eyes a cornflower blue, a tall girl who came just level with his chin when she was wearing heels. He was madly in love with a scholarly girl who was studying at night for her master’s degree in psychology while working during the day conducting interviews for a firm downtown on Shepherd Street; a serious girl who hoped to go on for her Ph.D., and then pass the state boards, and then practice psychology; a nutty girl who was capable of sending to the squadroom a six-foot high heart cut out of plywood and painted red and lettered in yellow with the words Cynthia Forrest Loves Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram Kling, So Is That A Crime? as she had done on St. Valentine’s Day just last month (and which Kling had still not heard the end of from all his comical colleagues); an emotional girl who could burst into tears at the sight of a blind man playing an accordian on The Stem, to whom she gave a five-dollar bill, merely put the bill silently into the cup, soundlessly, it did not even make a rustle, and turned away to weep into Kling’s shoulder; a passionate girl who clung to him fiercely in the night and who woke him sometimes at six in the morning to say, “Hey, Cop, I have to go to work in a few hours, are you interested?” to which Kling invariably answered, “No, I am not interested in sex and things like that,” and then kissed her until she was dizzy and afterwards sat across from her at the kitchen table in her apartment, staring at her, marveling at her beauty and once caused her to blush when he said, “There’s a woman who sells pidaguas on Mason Avenue, her name is Iluminada, she was born in Puerta Rico. Your name should be Illuminada, Cindy. You fill the room with light.”

Boy, was he in love.

Fuzz, 1968

Kling had come to the apartment to make love.

It was his day off, and that was what he wanted to do. He had been thinking about it all afternoon, in fact, and had finally come over to The apartment at four-thirty, letting himself in with the key Cindy had given him long ago, and then sitting in the darkening living room, waiting for her return.

The city outside was unwinding at day’s end, dusk softening her pace, slowing her step. Kling sat in an armchair near the window, watching the sky turn bloodred and then purple and then deepening to a grape-stained silky blackness. The apartment was very still.

Somewhere out there in the city of ten million people, there was a man named Walter Damascus and he had killed Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Leyden, had killed them brutally and viciously, pumping two shotgun blasts into each of their faces.

Kline wanted very much to go to bed with Cindy Forrest.

He did not move when he heard the key in the latch. He sat in the dark with a smile on his face, and then suddenly realized he might frighten her, and moved belatedly to turn on the table lamp. He was too late, she saw or sensed movement in the darkness. He heard her gasp, and immediately said, “It’s me, Cind.”

“Wow, you scared the hell out of me,” she said and turned on the lover light. “What are you doing here so early? You said…”

“I felt like coming over,” Kling said, and smiled.

“Yeah?”

“Mmm.”

She put her bag down on the hall table, wiggled out of her pumps, and came into the living room.

“Don’t you want a light?” she asked.

“No, it’s all right.”

“Pretty out there.”

“Mmm.”

“I love that tower. See it there?”

“Yes.”

She stared through the window a moment longer, bent to kiss him fleetingly, and then said, “Make yourself a drink, why don’t you?”

“You want one, too?”

“Yes. I’m exhausted,” Cindy said, and sighed, and padded softly into the bathroom. He heard the water running. He rose, turned on the lamp, and then went to where she kept her liquor in a drop-leaf desk. She was out of bourbon.

“No bourbon,” he said.

“What?”

“No bourbon. You’re out of bourbon,” he shouted.

“Oh, okay, I’ll have a little Scotch.”

“What?” he shouted.

“Scotch,” Cindy shouted. “A little Scotch.”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“I said okay.”

“Okay,” she said.

He smiled and carried the Scotch bottle into the small kitchenette. He took two short glasses down from the cabinet, poured a liberal shot into each glass, and then nearly broke his wrist trying to dislodge the ice-cube tray from the freezer compartment. He finally chipped the accumulated frost away with a butter knife, dropped two cubes into each glass, and then carried the drinks into the bedroom. Cindy was standing at the closet in half-slip and bra, reaching for a robe. With her back to him, she said, “I think I know what I’m going to write for my thesis, Bert.”

“What’s that?” he said. “Here’s your drink.”

“Thank you,” she said. Turning, she accepted the drink and tossed her robe onto the bed. She took a long sip, said, “Ahhh,” put the glass on the dresser, and then said, “I’ll be getting my master’s next June, you know. It’s time I began thinking about that doctorate.”

“Um-huh,” Kling said.

“You know what I’d like to do the thesis on?” she asked, and reached behind her to unclasp her bra.

“No, what?”

“The detective as voyeur,” she said.

He thought she was kidding, of course, because as she said the words her breasts simultaneously came free of the restraining bra, and he was, in that moment, very much the detective as voyeur. But she stepped out of her slip and panties without so much as cracking a smile, and then went to the bed to pick up the robe and put it on. As she was belting it, she said, “What do you think?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, looking at him with a somewhat puzzled expression. “Of course I’m serious. Why would I joke about something as important as my thesis?”

“Well, I don’t know, I just thought…”

“Of course I’m serious,” she repeated, more strongly this time. She was frowning as she picked up her drink again. “Why? Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

“I don’t know what you have in mind,” Kling said. “You gave me the title, but…”

“Well, I don’t know if that’d be the exact title,” Cindy said, annoyed. She sipped some more Scotch and then said, “Let’s go into the living room, huh?”

“Why don’t we stay in here awhile?” Kling said.

Cindy looked at him. He shrugged and then tried a smile.

“I’m very tired,” she said at last. “I’ve had a lousy day, and I think I’m about to get my period, and I don’t…”

“All the more reason to…”

“No, come on,” she said, and walked out of the bedroom. Kling watched her as she went. He kept watching the empty doorframe long after she was out of the room. He took a swallow of his Scotch, set his jaw, and followed her into the living room. She was sitting by the window, gazing out at the distant buildings, her bare feet propped on a hassock. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said, without turning to look at him.

“Which one?” he asked.

“My thesis,” she said testily. “Bert, can we possibly get our minds off…”

“Our minds?”

“Your mind,” she corrected.

“Sure,” he said.

“It isn’t that I don’t love you…”

“Sure.”

“Or even that I don’t want you…”

“Sure.”

“It’s just that at this particular moment I don’t feel like making love. I feel more like crying, if you’d like to know.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I’m about to get my period. I always feel very depressed a day or two before.”

“Okay,” he said.

“And also, I’ve got my mind on this damn thesis.”

“Which you don’t have to begin work on until next June.”

“No, not next June. I’ll be getting my master’s next June. I won’t start on the doctorate till September. Anyway, what difference does it make, would you mind telling me? I have to start thinking about it sometime, don’t I?”

“Yes, but…”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with you today, Bert.”

“It’s my day off,” he said.

“Well, that’s a non sequitur if ever I heard one. And anyway, it hasn’t been my day off. I went to work at nine o’clock this morning and I interviewed twenty-four people, and I’m tired and irritable and about to get…”

“Yes, you told me.”

“All right, so why are you picking on me?”

“Cindy,” he said, “maybe I’d better go home.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Then go home if you want to,” she said.

“All right, I will.”

“No, don’t,” she said.

“Cindy…”

“Oh, do what you want to do,” she said, “I don’t care.”

“Cindy, I love you very much,” he said. “Now cut it out!”

“Then why don’t you want to hear about my thesis?”

“I do want to hear about your thesis.”

“No, all you want to do is make love.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except I don’t feel like it right now.”

“Okay.”

“And you don’t have to sound so damn offended, either.”

“I’m not offended.”

“And you could at least express a tiny bit of interest in my thesis. I mean, Bert, you can at least ask what it’s going to be about.”

“What’s it going to be about?” he asked.

“Go to hell, I don’t feel like telling you now.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Fine,” she said.

They were both silent.

“Cindy,” he said at last, “I don’t even know you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like a bitch.”

“That’s too bad, but a bitch is also part of me, I’m awfully sorry. If you love me, you have to love the bitch part, too.”

“No, I don’t have to love the bitch part,” Kling said.

“Well, don’t, I don’t care.”

“What’s your thesis going to be about?”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“Good night, Cindy,” he said, “I’m going home.”

“That’s right, leave me alone when I’m feeling miserable.”

“Cindy…”

“It’s about you, you know, it was only inspired by you, you know. So go ahead and leave, what difference does it make that I love you so much and think about you day and night and even plan writing my goddamn thesis about you? Go ahead, go home, what do I care?”

“Oh boy,” he said.

“Sure, oh boy.”

“Tell me about your thesis.”

“Do you really want to hear it?”

“Yes.”

“Well…” Cindy said, “I got the idea from Blow-Up.”

“Mmm?”

“The photographs in Blow-Up, you know?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you remember the part of the film where he’s enlarging the black-and-white photographs, making them bigger and bigger in an attempt to figure out what happened?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, it seemed to me that this entire experience was suggestive of the infantile glimpse of the primal scene.”

“The what?”

“The primal scene,” Cindy said. “The mother and the father having intercourse.”

“If you’re going to start talking sexy,” Kling said, “I really am going home.”

“I’m very serious about this, so…”

“I’m sorry, go ahead.”

“The act of love is rarely understood by the child,” Cindy said. “He may witness it again and again, but still remain confused about what’s actually happening. The photographer in the film, you’ll remember, took a great many pictures of the couple embracing and kissing in the park, do you remember that?”

“Yes, i do.”

“Which might possibly relate to the repetitive witnessing of the primal scene. The woman is young and beautiful, you remember, she was played by Vanessa Redgrave, which is how a small boy would think of his mother.”

“He would think of his mother as Vanessa Redgrave?”

“No, as young and beautiful. Bert, I swear to God, if you…”

“All right, I’m sorry, really. Go on.”

“I’m quite serious, you know,” Cindy said, and took a cigarette from the inlaid box on the table beside the chair. Kling lighted it for her. “Thank you,” she said, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Where was I?” she asked.

“The young and beautiful mother.”

“Right, which is exactly how a small boy thinks of his mother, as young and beautiful, as the girl he wants to marry. You’ve heard little boys say they want to marry their mothers, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Kling said, “I have.”

“All right, the girl in these necking-in-the-park scenes is Vanessa Redgrave, very young, very beautiful. The man, however, is an older man, he’s got gray hair, he’s obviously middle-aged. In fact, Antonioni even inserts some dialogue to that effect, I forget exactly what it was, I think the photographer says something like ‘A bit over the hill, isn’t he?’ Something like that, that’s the sense of it, anyway. That this man, her lover, is a much older man. Do you understand?”

“Yes. You’re saying he’s a father figure.”

“Yes. Which means that those scenes in the park, when the photographer is taking pictures of the lovers, could be construed as a small boy watching his mother and his father making love.”

“All right.”

“Which the photographer doesn’t quite understand. He’s witnessing the primal scene, but he doesn’t know what it’s really all about. So he takes his pictures home and begins enlarging them, the way a child might enlarge upon vivid memories in an attempt to understand them. But the longer he studies the enlarged pictures, the more confused he becomes, until finally he sees what might be a pistol in one of the blow-ups. A pistol, Bert.”

“Yes, a pistol,” he said.

“I don’t have to tell you that the pistol is a fixed psychological symbol.”

“For what?”

“For what do you think?” Cindy asked.

“Oh,” Kling said.

“Yes. And then, to further underscore the Oedipal situation Antonioni has his photographer discover that the older man is dead, he has been killed — which is what every small boy wishes would happen to his father. So that he can have the mother all to himself, you do understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so that’s what started me thinking about the detective as a voyeur. Because, you remember, there was a great deal of suspense in that part of the movie, the part where he’s blowing up the photographs. It’s really a mystery he’s working on — and he, in a very real sense, is a detective, isn’t he?”

“Well, I suppose so.”

“Well, of course he is, Bert. The mystery element gets stronger and stronger as he continues with the investigation. And then, of course, we see an actual corpse. I mean, there’s no question but that a murder has been committed. Antonioni leaves it there because he’s more interested…”

“Leaves what? The corpse?”

“No, not the corpse. Well, yes, he does leave the corpse there, too, as a matter of fact, but I was referring to the mystery element, I meant…” She suddenly looked at him suspiciously. “Are you putting me on again?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and smiled.

“Well, don’t be such a wise guy,” she said, and returned the smile, which he thought was at least somewhat encouraging. “What I meant was that Antonioni doesn’t pursue the mystery once it’s served his purpose. He’s doing a film about illusion and reality and alienation and all, so he’s not interested in who done it or why it was done or any of that crap.”

“Okay,” Kling said. “But I still don’t see…”

“Well, it occurred to me that perhaps police investigation is similarly linked to the primitive and infantile desire to understand the primal scene.”

“Boy, that’s really reaching, Cindy. How do you get…”

“Well, hold it a minute, will you?”

“Okay, let me hear.”

“Got you hooked, huh?” she said, and smiled again, this time very encouragingly, he thought.

“Go on,” he said.

“The police officer… the detective…”

“Yes?”

“… is privileged to see the uncensored results of violence, which is what the child imagines lovemaking to be. He can think his father is hurting his mother, you know, he can think her moaning is an expression of pain, he can think they’re fighting. In any event, he’ll often explain it to himself that way because he has neither the experience nor the knowledge to understand it in any other way. He doesn’t know what they’re doing, Bert. It’s completely beyond his ken. He knows that he’s stimulated by it, yes, but he doesn’t know why.”

“If you think looking at a guy who’s been hit with a meat ax is stimulating…”

“No, that’s not my point. I’m not trying to make any such analogy, although I do think there’s some truth to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, violence is stimulating. Even the results of violence are stimulating.”

“The results of violence caused me to throw up last Saturday morning,” Kling said.

‘“That’s stimulation of a sort, isn’t it? But don’t get me away from my point.”

“What is your point?”

“My point is…”

“I don’t think I’m going to like it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you said I inspired it.”

“Antonioni inspired it.”

“You said I did.”

“Not the initial impetus. Later, I connected it with you, which is only natural because there was a homicide involved, and because I’m madly in love with you and very interested in your work. All right?”

“Well, I like it a little better now, I must admit.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet.”

“I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”

“Okay. We start with a man — the detective — viewing the results of violence and guessing at what might have happened, right?”

“Well, there’s not much guesswork involved when you see two bullet holes in a guy’s head. I mean, you can just possibly figure out the violent act was a shooting, you know what I mean?”

“Yes, that’s obvious, but the thing you don’t know is who did the shooting, or what the circumstances of the shooting were, and so on. You never know what really happened until you catch whoever did it, am I right?”

“No, you’re wrong. We usually know plenty before we make an arrest. Otherwise, we don’t make it. When we charge somebody, we like to think it’ll stick.”

“But on what do you base your arrest?”

“On the facts. There’re a lot of locked closets in criminal investigation. We open all the doors and look for skeletons.”

“Exactly!” Cindy said triumphantly. “You search for detail. You examine each and every tiny segment of the picture in an attempt to find a clue that will make the entire picture more meaningful, just as the photographer did in Blow-Up. And very often your investigation uncovers material that’s even more difficult to understand. It only becomes clear later on, the way sexual intercourse eventually becomes clear to the child when he reaches adulthood. He can then say to himself. ‘Oh, so that’s what they were doing in there, they were screwing in there.”

“I don’t recall ever having seen my mother and father doing anything like that,” Kling said.

“You’ve blocked it out.”

“No, I just never saw them doing anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that” Kling said.

“You can’t even say the word,” Cindy said, and began giggling. “You’ve so effectively blocked it out…”

“There’s one thing I hate about psychologists,” Kling said.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Cindy asked, still giggling.

“They’re all the time analyzing everything.”

“Which is exactly what you do every day of the week, only you call it investigation. Can’t you see the possibilities of this, Bert?” she asked, no longer laughing, her face suddenly serious, suddenly very tired-looking again. “Oh, I know I haven’t really developed it yet, but don’t you think it’s an awfully good beginning? The detective as voyeur, the detective as privileged observer of a violent scene he can neither control nor understand, frightening by its very nature, confusing at first, but becoming more and more meaningful until it is ultimately understood. It’ll make a good thesis. I don’t care what you think.”

“I think it’ll make a good thesis, too,” Kling said. “Let’s go work out the primal scene part of it.”

He looked down into her face just as she turned hers up, and their eyes met, and held, and neither said a word for several moments. He kept watching her, thinking how much he loved her and wanted her, and seeing the cornflower eyes edged with weariness, her face pale and drawn and drained of energy. Her lips were slightly parted, she look in a deep breath and then released it, and the hand holding the drink slowly lowered to hang limply alongside the arm of the chair. He sensed what she was about to say, Yes, she would say, Yes, she’d make love even though she didn’t feel like it, even though she was depressed and tired and felt unattractive, even though she’d much rather sit here and watch the skyline and sip a little more Scotch and then doze off, even though she didn’t feel the tiniest bit sexy, Yes, she would, if that was what he wanted. He read this in her eyes and perched on her lips, and he suddenly felt like a hulking rapist who had shambled up out of the sewer, so he shrugged and lightly said, “Maybe we’d better not. Be too much like necrophilia,” and smiled. She smiled back at him, wearily and not at all encouragingly. He gently took the glass from her dangling hand and went to refill it for her.

But he was disappointed.

The Roundelay Bar was on Jefferson Avenue, three blocks from the new museum. At five-fifteen that afternoon, when Kling arrived for his business meeting with Anne Gilroy, it was thronged with advertising executives and pretty young secretaries and models, all of whom behaved like guests at a private cocktail party, moving, drinking, chattering, moving on again, hardly any of them sitting at the handful of tables scattered throughout the dimly lit room.

Anne Gilroy was sitting at a table in the far corner, wearing an open crochet dress over what appeared to be a body stocking. At least, Kling, hoped it was a body stocking, and not just a body. He felt very much out of place in an atmosphere as sleek and as sophisticated as this one, where everyone seemed to be talking about the latest Doyle Dane campaign, or the big Solters and Sabinson coup, or the new Blaine Thompson three-sheet, whatever any of those were. He felt shabbily dressed in his blue plaid jacket, his tie all wrong and improperly knotted, his gun in its shoulder holster causing a very un-Chipplike bulge, felt in fact like a bumbling country hick who had inadvertently stumbled into whatever was making this city tick. And besides, he felt guilty as hell.

Anne waved the moment she saw him. He moved his way through the buzzing crowd and then sat beside her and looked around quickly, certain somehow that Cindy would be standing behind one of the pillars, brandishing a hatchet.

“You’re right on time,” Anne said, smiling. “I like punctual men.”

“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.

“No, I was waiting for you.”

“Well, what would you like?”

“Martinis give me a loose, free feeling,” she said. “I’ll have a martini. Straight up.”

He signaled to the waiter and ordered a martini for her and a Scotch and water for himself.

“Do you like my dress?” Anne asked.

“Yes, it’s very pretty.”

“Did you think it was me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Underneath.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“It isn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, no. No. No.”

“You keep looking around the room.”

“Habit. Check it out, you know, known criminals, you know, types. Occupational hazards.”

“My, you’re nervous,” she said. “Does my dress make you nervous?”

“No, it’s a very nice dress.”

“I wish I had the guts to really wear it naked underneath,” Anne said, and giggled.

“Well, you’d get arrested,” Kling said. “Section 1140 of the Penal Law.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exposure of person,” Kling said, and began quoting. “A person who willfully and lewdly exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where others are present, or procures another so to expose himself, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

“Oh, my,” Anne said.

“Yes,” Kling said, suddenly embarrassed.

“‘Private parts,’ I love that.”

“Well, that’s what we call them. I mean, in police work. I mean, that’s the way we refer to them.”

“Yes, I love it.”

“Mmm,” Kling said. “Hey, here’re the drinks.”

“Shall I mix it, sir?” the waiter asked.

“What?”

“Did you want this mixed, sir?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, just a little water in it, please,” he said, and smiled at Anne and almost knocked over her martini. The waiter poured a little water into the Scotch and moved away.

“Cheers,” Kling said.

“Cheers,” Anne said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Kling who was already drinking, almost choked. “What?” he said.

“A girlfriend.”

“Yes,” he answered glumly, and nodded.

“Is that why you’re so worried?”

“Who’s worried?” he said.

“You shouldn’t be,” Anne said. “After all, this is only a business meeting.”

“That’s right, I’m not worried at all,” Kling said.

“What’s she like? Your girlfriend?” Anne said.

“Well, I’d much rather discuss the conversation you had with Mrs. Leyden.”

“Are you engaged?”

“Not officially.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we plan on getting married someday, I guess, but we…”

“You guess?”

“Will, no, actually there’s no guesswork involved. We simply haven’t set the date, that’s all. Cindy’s still in school, and…”

“Is that her name? Cindy?”

“Yes. For Cynthia.”

“And you say she’s still in school? How old is she?”

“Twenty-three. She’s finishing her master’s this June.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, and she’ll be going on for her doctorate in the fall.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Kling said.

“She must be very bright.”

“She is.”

“I hardy finished high school,” Anne said, and paused. “Is she pretty?”

“Yes.” Kling took another swallow of Scotch and then said, “I’m supposed to be the detective, but you’re asking all the questions.”

“I’m a very curious girl,” Anne said, and smiled. “But go ahead. What do you want to know?”

“What time did you call Mrs. Leyden last Friday?”

“Oh, I thought you were going to ask some questions about me.”

“No, actually I…”

“I’m twenty-five years old,” Anne said, “born and raised right here in the city. My father’s a Transit Authority employee, my mother’s a housewife. We’re all very Irish.” She paused and sipped at the martini. “I began working for AT&M right after I graduated high school, and I’ve been there since. I believe in making love not war, and I think you’re possibly the handsomest man I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Thank you,” Kling mumbled, and hastily lifted his glass to his lips.

“Does that embarrass you?”

“No.”

“What does it do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I believe in speaking honestly and frankly,” Anne said.

“I see that.”

“Would you like to go to bed with me?”

Kling did not answer immediately, because what popped into his mind instantly was the single word Yes! and it was followed by a succession of wild images interspersed with blinking neon lights that spelled out additional messages such as You’re goddamn right I’d like to go to bed with you and when? and Your place or mine? and things like that. So he waited until he had regained control of his libido, and then he calmly said, “I’ll have to think it over. In the meantime, let’s talk about Mrs. Leyden, shall we?”

“Sure,” Anne said. “What would you like to know?”

“What time did you call her?”

“Just before closing time Friday.”

“Which was?”

“About ten to five, something like that.”

“Do you remember the conversation?”

“Yes. I said, ‘Hello, may I please speak to Mrs. Leyden?” and she said, ‘This is Mrs. Leyden.’ So I informed her that her husband had wired us from California to ask that she send him a fresh checkbook, and she said she knew all about it, but thanks anyway.”

“She knew all about what?”

“The checkbook.”

“How’d she know?”

“She said her husband had called from the Coast that morning to say he’d be in San Francisco all weekend, and that he’d be moving on to Portland on Monday morning and wanted her to send a fresh checkbook to the Logan Hotel there.”

“What time had he called her?”

“She didn’t say.”

“But if he’d already called her, why’d he bother sending a wire to the company?”

“I don’t know. Just double-checking, I guess.”

“I wonder if he called her again later to say he’d be coming home instead?”

“She didn’t mention getting two calls.”

“This was close to five, you said?”

“Yes, just before closing.”

“Was he normally so careful?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would he normally make a call and then back it with a wire asking the company to convey the identical information?”

“He may have sent the wire before he called his wife.”

“Even so.”

“Besides, the company paid his expenses, so why not?” Anne smiled. “Have you thought it over yet?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Think about it. I’d like to. Very much.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re stunning.”

“Oh, come on,” Kling said.

“You are. I’m not easily impressed, believe me. I think I’m in love with you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Sure it is. A person can’t just fall in love with a person without knowing anything about the person. That only happens in the movies.”

“I know everything there is to know about you,” Anne said. “Let’s have another drink, shall we?”

“Sure,” Kling said, and signaled the waiter. “Another round,” he said when the waiter came over, and then turned to Anne, who was watching him with her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed, and he suddenly thought, Jesus, I think she really is in love with me. “Anyway, as you said, this is a business meeting, and…”

“It’s a lot more than that,” Anne said, “and you know it. I think you knew it when you agreed to meet me, but if you didn’t know it then, you certainly know it now. I love you and I want to go to bed with you. Let’s go to my apartment right this minute.”

“Hold it, hold it,” Kling said, thinking, What am I, crazy? Say Yes. Pay the check and get out of here, take this luscious little girl to wherever she wants to go, hurry up before she changes her mind. “You don’t know me at all,” he said, “really. We’ve hardly even talked to each other.”

“What’s there to talk about? You’re a wonderfully good-looking man, and you’re undoubtedly brave because you have to be brave in your line of work, and you’re idealistic because otherwise why would you be involved in crime prevention, and you’re bright as hell, and I think it’s very cute the way you’re so embarrassed because I’m begging you to take me to bed. There’s nothing else I have to know, do you have a mole on your thigh, or something?”

“No,” he said, and smiled.

“So?”

“Well, I… I can’t right now, anyway.”

“Why not?” Anne paused, and then moved closer to him, covering his hand with hers on the tabletop. “Bert,” she whispered, “I love you and I want you.”

“Listen,” he said, “let’s, uh, think this over a little, huh? I’m, uh…”

“Don’t you want me?”

“Yes, but…”

“Ah, one for our side,” she said, and smiled. “What is it, then?”

“I’m, uh, engaged,” he said. “I already told you that.”

“So what?”

“Well, you, uh, wouldn’t want me to…”

“Yes, I would,” Anne said.

“Well, I couldn’t. Not now. I mean, maybe not ever.”

“My telephone number is Washington 6-3841. Call me later tonight, after you leave your girlfriend.”

“I’m not seeing her tonight.”

“You’re not?” Anne asked astonished.

“No. She goes to school on Wednesday nights.”

“Then, that settles it,” Anne said. “Pay the check.”

“I’ll pay the check,” Kling said, “but nothing’s settled.”

“You’re coming with me,” Anne said. “We’re going to make love six times, and then I’m going to cook you some dinner, and then we’ll make love another six times. What time do you have to be at work tomorrow morning?”

“The answer is no,” Kling said.

“Okay,” Anne said breezily. “But write down the telephone number.”

“I don’t have to write it down.”

“Oh, such a smart cop,” Anne said. “What’s the number?”

“Washington 6-3841.”

“You’ll call me,” she said. “You’ll call me later tonight when you think of me all alone in my bed, pining away for you.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Maybe not tonight,” she amended. “But soon.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Anyway,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. Because if you don’t call me, I’ll call you. I have no pride, Bert. I want you, and I’m going to get you. Consider yourself forewarned.”

“You scare hell out of me,” he said honestly.

“Good. Do I also excite you just a little bit?”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. “Just a little bit.”

“That’s two for our side,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

It is easy to solve murder cases if you are alert.

It is also easy to get beat up if you are not careful. Bert Kling was not too terribly alert that next afternoon, and so he did not come even close to solving the Leyden case. Being careless, he got beat up.

He got beat up by a woman.

Anne Gilroy marched up the front steps of the station house at ten minutes to three, wearing a blue-and-red-striped mini, her long blond hair caught at the back of her neck with a red ribbon. Her shoes were blue, they flashed with November sunshine as she mounted the steps and walked past the green globes flanking the stoop. She walked directly to where Sergeant Dave Murchison sat behind the high muster desk, beamed a radiant smile at him, batted her blue eyes in a semaphore even desk sergeants understand, and sweetly said, “Is Detective Kling in?”

“He is,” Murchison said.

“May I see him, please?”

“Who shall I say is here, whom?” Murchison said.

“Miss Anne Gilroy,” she said, and wheeled away from the desk to study first the Wanted posters on the bulletin board, and then the clock on the wall. She sat at last on the wooden bench opposite the muster desk, took a cigarette from her blue bag, glanced inquiringly at Murchison before lighting it (he nodded permission), and then, to his distraction, crossed her legs and sat calmly smoking while he tried to reach Kling, who was at that moment in the lieutenant’s office.

“Tied up right now,” Murchison said. “Would you mind waiting a moment?”

“Thank you,” Anne Gilroy said, and jiggled her foot. Murchison looked at her legs, wondering what the world was coming to, and wondering whether he should give permission to his twelve-year-old daughter, prepubescent and emerging, to wear such short skirts when she entered her teens, see clear up the whole leg, he thought, and then mopped his brow and plugged into the switchboard as a light flashed, he held a brief conversation, pulled out the cord, looked again to where Anne Gilroy sat with crossed legs and smoke-wreathed blond hair, and said, “He’ll be right down, miss.”

“Oh, can’t I go up?”

“He said he’d be down.”

“I was hoping to see a squadroom.”

“Well,” Murchison said, and tilted his head to one side, and thought, what the hell do you hope to see up there except a few bulls working their asses off? The switchboard blinked into life again. He plugged in and look a call from an irate patrolman on Third who said he had phoned in for a meat wagon half an hour ago and there was a lady bleeding on the goddamn sidewalk, when was it gonna get there? Murchison told him to calm down, and the patrolman told Murchison he had never seen so much blood in his life, and the lady was gonna die, and the crowd was getting mean. Murchison said he’d call the hospital again, and then yanked out the cord, and gave himself an outside line.

He was dialing the hospital when Kling came down the iron-runged steps leading from the second floor. Kling looked surprised, even though Murchison had told him who was here. Maybe it was the short skirt that did it. Murchison watched as Kling walked to the bench (“Hello, this is Sergeant Murchison over at the 87th Precinct,” he said into the phone, “where the hell’s that ambulance?”), extended his hand to Anne Gilroy, and then sat on the bench beside her. Murchison could not hear them from across the room. (“Well, I got a patrolman screaming at me, and a crowd about to get unmanageable, and a lady about to bleed to death right on the sidewalk there, so how about it?”) Kling now seemed more embarrassed then surprised, he kept nodding his head at Anne Gilroy as she smiled and batted her blue eyes, talking incessantly, her face very close to his as though she were whispering all the secrets of the universe to him. (“Yeah, well how about breaking up the goddamn pinochle game and getting somebody over there?” Murchison shouted into the phone.) Kling nodded again, rose from the bench, and walked toward the muster desk. (“If I get another call from that patrolman, I’m going straight to the mayor’s office, you got that?” Murchison yelled, and angrily pulled the cord from the switchboard.)

“I’m going out for some coffee,” Kling said.

“Okay,” Murchison said. “When will you be back?”

“Half an hour or so.”

“Right,” Murchison said, and watched as Kling went back to the bench. Anne Gilroy stood up, looped her arm through Kling’s, smiled over her shoulder at Murchison, and clickety-clacked on her high heels across the muster room floor, tight little ass twitching busily, long blond hair bouncing on her back. The switchboard was glowing again. Murchison plugged in to find the same patrolman, nearly hysterical this time because the lady had passed away a minute ago, and her brother was screaming to the crowd that this was police negligence, and the patrolman wanted to know what to do. Murchison said whatever he did, he shouldn’t draw his revolver unless it got really threatening, and the patrolman told him it looked really threatening right now, with the crowd beginning to yell and all, and maybe he ought to send some reinforcements over. Murchison said he’d see what he could do and that was when the scream came from the front steps outside the precinct.

Murchison was a desk cop, and he wasn’t used to reacting too quickly, but there was something urgent about this scream, and he put two and two together immediately and realized that the person screaming must be the girl named Anne Gilroy who had sashayed out of here just a minute ago on the arm of Bert Kling. He came around the muster desk with all the swiftness of a corpulent man past fifty, reaching for his holstered revolver as he puffed toward the main doors, though he couldn’t understand what could possibly be happening on the front steps of a police station, especially to a girl who was in the company of a detective.

What was happening — and this surprised Murchison no end because he expected to find a couple of hoods maybe threatening the girl or something — what was happening was that another blond girl was hitting Kling on the head with a dispatch case. It took a moment for Murchison to recognize the other blond girl as Cindy Forrest, whom he had seen around enough times to know that she was Kling’s girl, and he had never seen her with such a terrible look on her face. The only time he had ever seen a woman with such a look on her face was the time his Aunt Moira had caught his Uncle John screwing the lady upstairs on the front-room sofa of her apartment. Aunt Moira had gone up to get a recipe for glazed oranges and had got instead her glassy eyed husband humping the bejabbers out of the woman who until then had been her very good friend. Aunt Moira had chased Uncle John into the hallway and down the steps with his pants barely buttoned, hitting him on the head with a broom she grabbed on the third-floor landing, chasing Uncle John clear into the streets where Murchison and some of his boyhood friends were playing Knuckles near Ben the Kosher Delicatessen. The look on Aunt Moira’s face had been something terrible and fiery to see, all right, and the same look was on Cindy Forrest’s young and pretty face this very moment as she continued to clobber Kling with the brown leather dispatch case. The blond girl, Anne Gilroy, kept screaming for her to stop, but there was no stopping a lady when she got the Aunt Moira look. Kling, big detective that he was, was trying to cover his face and the top of his head with both hands while Cindy did her demolition work. The girl Anne Gilroy kept screaming as Murchison rushed down the steps yelling, “All right, break it up,” sounding exactly like a cop. The only thing Cindy seemed intent on breaking up, however, was Kling’s head, so Murchison stepped between them, gingerly avoiding the flailing dispatch case, and then shoved Kling down the steps and out of range, and shouted at Cindy, “You’re striking a police officer, miss,” which she undoubtedly knew, and the girl Anne Gilroy screamed once again, and then there was silence.

“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 hack 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 to 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.

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, damnit!”

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

“Cindy…”

“So a cheap little floozie 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?”

“To tell you I love you.”

“Ha!”

“I love you,” Kling said.

“Yeah.”

“I do.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“Then why…”

“We were going out for a cup of coffee, that’s all.”

“Sure.”

“There’s nobody in the whole world I want but you,” Kling said.

Cindy did not answer.

“I mean it.”

She was still silent.

“I love you, honey,” he said. “Now come on.” He waited. She was standing with her head bent, watching the floor. He did not dare approach her. “Come on,” he said.

“I wanted to kill you,” Cindy said softly. “When I saw you together, I wanted to kill you.” She began weeping gently, still staring at the floor, not raising her eyes to his. He went to her at last and took her in his arms, and held her head cradled against his shoulder, his fingers lightly stroking her hair, her tears wetting his jacket and his shirt.

“I love you so much,” she said, “that I wanted to kill you.”

Shotgun, 1969

Kling felt pretty lousy.

His condition, he kept telling himself, had nothing to do with the fact that Cindy Forrest had broken their engagement three weeks before. To begin with, it had never been a proper engagement, and a person certainly couldn’t go around mourning something that had never truly existed. Besides, Cindy had made it abundantly clear that, whereas they had enjoyed some very good times together, and whereas she would always think upon him fondly and recall with great pleasure the days and months (yea, even years) they had spent together pretending they were in love, she had nonetheless met a very attractive young man who was a practicing psychiatrist at Buenavista Hospital, where she was doing her internship, and seeing as how they shared identical interests, and seeing as how he was quite ready to get married whereas Kling seemed to be married to a .38 Detective’s Special, a scarred wooden desk, and a detention cage, Cindy felt it might be best to terminate their relationship immediately rather than court the possibility of trauma induced by slow and painful withdrawal.

That had been three weeks ago, and he had not seen nor called Cindy since, and the pain of the breakup was equaled only by the pain of the bursitis in his right shoulder, despite the fact that he was wearing a copper bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet had been given to him by none other than Meyer Meyer, whom no one would have dreamed of as a superstitious man given to beliefs in ridiculous claims. The bracelet was supposed to begin working in ten days (Well, maybe two weeks, Meyer had said, hedging) and Kling had been wearing it for eleven days now, with no relief for the bursitis, but with a noticeable green stain around his wrist just below the bracelet. Hope springs eternal. Somewhere in his race memory, there lurked a hulking ape-like creature rubbing animal teeth by a fire, praying in grunts for a splendid hunt on the morrow. Somewhere also in his race memory, though not as far back, was the image of Cindy Forrest naked in his arms, and the concomitant fantasy that she would call to say she’d made a terrible mistake and was ready to drop her psychiatrist pal. No Women’s Lib man he, Kling nonetheless felt it perfectly all right for Cindy to take the initiative in re-establishing their relationship; it was she, after all, who had taken the first and final step toward ending it.

Early Monday morning, on Kling’s day off, he called Cindy Forrest. It was only seven-thirty, but he knew her sleeping and waking habits as well as he knew his own, and since the phone was on the kitchen wall near the refrigerator, and since she would at that moment be preparing breakfast, he was not surprised when she answered it on the second ring.

“Hello?” she said. She sounded rushed, a trifle breathless. She always allowed herself a scant half hour to get out of the apartment each morning, rushing from bedroom to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom again, finally running for the elevator, looking miraculously well-groomed and sleek and rested and ready to do battle with the world. He visualized her standing now at the kitchen phone, only partially clothed, and felt a faint stirring of desire.

“Hi. Cindy,” he said, “it’s me.”

“Oh, hello, Bert,” she said. “Can you hold just a second? The coffee’s about to boil over.” He waited. In the promised second, she was back on the line. “Okay,” she said. “I tried to reach you the other night.”

“Yes, I know. I’m returning your call.”

“Right, right,” she said. There was a long silence. “I’m trying to remember why I called you. Oh, yes. I found a shirt of yours in the dresser, and I wanted to know what I should do with it. So I called you at home, and there was no answer, and then I figured you probably had night duty, and I tried the squadroom, but Steve said you weren’t on. So I decided to wrap it up and mail it. I’ve already got it all addressed and everything.”

There was another silence.

“So I guess I’ll drop it off at the post office on my way to work this morning,” Cindy said.

“Okay,” Kling said.

“If that’s what you want me to do,” Cindy said.

“Well, what would you like to do?”

“It’s all wrapped and everything, so I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

“Be a lot of trouble to unwrap it, I guess,” Kling said.

“Why would I want to unwrap it?”

“I don’t know. Why did you call me Saturday night?”

“To ask what you wanted me to do with the shirt.”

“What choices did you have in mind?”

“When? Saturday night?”

“Yes,” Kling said. “When you called.”

“Well, there were several possibilities, I guess. You could have stopped here to pick up the shirt, or I could have dropped it off at your place or the squadroom, or we could have had a drink together or something, at which time…”

“I didn’t know that was permissible.”

“Which?”

“Having a drink together. Or any of those things, in fact.”

“Well, it’s all academic now, isn’t it? You weren’t home when I called, and you weren’t working, either, so I wrapped up the goddamn shirt, and I’ll mail it to you this morning.”

“What are you sore about?”

“Who’s sore?” Cindy said.

“You sound sore.”

“I have to get out of here in twenty minutes and I still haven’t had my coffee.”

“Wouldn’t want to be late for the hospital,” Kling said. “Might upset your friend Dr. Freud.”

“Ha-ha,” Cindy said mirthlessly.

“How is he, by the way?”

“He’s fine, by the way.”

“Good.”

“Bert?”

“Yes, Cindy?”

“Never mind, nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I’ll put the shirt in the mail. I washed it and ironed it, I hope it doesn’t get messed up.”

“I hope not.”

“Good-bye, Bert,” she said, and hung up.

“Eighty-seventh Squad, Kling.”

“Bert, this is Cindy.”

“Hi,” he said.

“Are you busy?” she asked.

“I was just about to call the I.S.”

“Oh.”

“But go ahead. It can wait.”

Cindy hesitated. Then, her voice very low, she said, “Bert, can I see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” he said.

“Yes.” She hesitated again. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.”

“I know.”

“I bought something for you.”

“Why’d you do that, Cindy?”

“Habit,” she said, and he suspected she was smiling.

“I’d love to see you, Cindy,” he said.

“I’ll be working till five.”

“No Christmas party?”

“At a hospital? Bert, my dear, we deal here daily with life and death.”

“Don’t we all,” Kling said, and smiled. “Shall I meet you at the hospital?”

“All right. The side entrance. That’s near the emergency…”

“Yes, I know where it is. At five o’clock?”

“Well, five-fifteen.”

“Okay, five-fifteen.”

“You’ll like what I got you,” she said, and then hung up.

He had forgotten, almost, what she looked like.

She came through the hospital’s chrome and glass revolving doors, and he saw at first only a tall blond girl, full-breasted and wide-hipped, honey blond hair clipped close to her head, cornflower-blue eyes, shoving through the doors and out onto the low, flat stoop, and he reacted to her the way he might react to any beautiful stranger stepping into the crisp December twilight, and then he realized it was Cindy, and his heart lurched.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

She took his arm. They walked in silence for several moments.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you. So do you.”

He was, in fact, quite aware of the way they looked together, and fell immediately into the Young Lovers syndrome, positive that everyone they passed on the windswept street knew instantly that they were mad about each other. Each stranger (or so he thought) cased them quickly, remarking silently on their oneness, envying their youth and strength and glowing health, longing to be these two on Christmas Eve, Cindy and Bert, American Lovers, who had met cute, and loved long, and fought hard, and parted sadly, and were now together again in the great tradition of the season, radiating love like flashing Christmas bulbs on a sixty-foot-high tree.

They found a cocktail lounge near the hospital, one they had never been to before, either together or separately, Kling sensing that a “first” was necessary to their rediscovery of each other. They sat at a small round table in a corner of the room. The crowd noises were comforting. He suspected an English pub might be like this on Christmas Eve, the voice cadences lulling and soft, the room itself warm and protective, a good place for nurturing a love that had almost died and was now about to redeclare itself.

“Where’s my present?” he said, and grinned in mock, evil greediness.

She reached behind her to where she had hung her coat on a wall peg, and dug into the pocket, and placed a small package in the exact center of the table. The package was wrapped in bright blue paper and tied with a green ribbon and bow. He felt a little embarrassed; he always did when receiving a gift. He went into the pocket of his own coat, and placed his gift on the table beside hers, a slightly larger package wrapped in jingle-bells paper, red and gold, no bow.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

They hesitated. They looked at each other. They both smiled.

“You first,” he said.

“All right.”

She slipped her fingernail under the Scotch Tape and broke open the wrapping without tearing the paper, and then eased the box out, and moved the wrapping aside, intact, and centered the box before her, and opened its lid. He had bought her a plump gold heart, seemingly bursting with an inner life of its own, the antiqued gold chain a tether that kept it from ballooning ecstatically into space. She looked at the heart, and then glanced quickly into his expectant face and nodded briefly and said, “Thank you, it’s beautiful.”

“It’s not Valentine’s Day…”

“Yes.” She was still nodding. She was looking down at the heart again, and nodding.

“But I thought…” He shrugged.

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said again. “Thank you, Bert.”

“Well,” he said, and shrugged again, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and suspecting it was because he hated the ritual of opening presents. He ripped off the bow on her gift, tore open the paper, and lifted the lid off the tiny box. She had bought him a gold tie-tack in the form of miniature handcuffs, and he read meaning into the gift immediately, significance beyond the fact that he was a cop whose tools of the trade included real handcuffs hanging from his belt. His gift had told her something about the way he felt, and he was certain that her gift was telling him the very same thing — they were together again, she was binding herself to him again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you like it, Bert?”

“I love it.”

“I thought…”

“Yes, I love it.”

“Good.”

They had not yet ordered drinks. Kling signaled for the waiter, and they sat in curious silence until he came to the table. The waiter left, and the silence lengthened, and it was then that Kling began to suspect something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. She had closed the lid on his gift, and was staring at the closed box.

“What is it?” Kling asked.

“Bert…”

“Tell me, Cindy.”

“I didn’t come here to…”

He knew already, there was no need for her to elaborate. He knew, and the noises of the room were suddenly too loud, the room itself too hot.

“Bert, I’m going to marry him,” she said.

“I see.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” he said. “No, Cindy, please.”

“Bert, what you and I had together was very good…”

“I know that, honey.”

“And I just couldn’t end it the way… the way we were ending it. I had to see you again, and tell you how much you’d meant to me. I had to be sure you knew that.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Bert?”

“Yes, Cindy. Okay,” he said. He smiled and touched her hand reassuringly. “Okay,” he said again.

They spent a half hour together, drinking only the single round, and then they went out into the cold, and they shook hands briefly, and Cindy said, “Good-bye, Bert,” and he said, “Good-bye, Cindy,” and they walked off in opposite directions.

Sadie When She Died, 1972