He Who Hesitates

by Ed McBain

  "What are you talking about?" she said. "I told my boss I had a headache. I can't just walk back in now and tell him—"

  "We could meet later," Roger said. "For supper."

  "Are you—" She stopped the words and let out her breath in exasperation, and then stared at him solemnly and angrily for several moments, and then said, "What the hell is it?"

  "Nothing."

  "Two minutes ago, you were kissing me as if—"

  "It's just that I promised somebody—"

  "Well, what scared you off, that's all I want to know. Don't you like the way I kiss?"

  "I like the way you kiss."

  "Well, then what? I mean, if you're afraid of being seen with a colored girl, I mean taking a colored girl up to your room—"

  "It's not that."

  "I mean, we can always go back to my house, where we'll be surrounded by colored people and also by rats running out of the walls, and leaky pipes, and exposed wiring, and—"

  "There are rats where I'm staying, too."

  "Of course, my mother might not like the idea of my bringing home a white man. She might actually begin singing the same old tune she's been singing ever since I was a darling little pickaninny, 'Honeychile stay away from de white man, he is only out to get in yo sweet little pants and rob you of yo maiden.'"

  "Look, Amelia—"

  "The only thing my mother doesn't know, made of iron though she is, is that her darling little Amelia was robbed of her 'maiden' on a rooftop the summer she was twelve years old, and it wasn't a white man who did it, or even a white boy. It was six members of a street gang called the Persian Lords, the biggest blackest niggers you ever saw in your life." Amelia paused. Bitterly, she said, "My duena was away on vacation that summer, I guess. At the beach, don't you know? Sand Harbor, where all the society ladies spend their time, naturally. What the hell is it, Roger?"

  "Nothing."

  "You're not a faggot, are you?"

  "A what?"

  "A fairy, a pansy."

  "No."

  "Then why—"

  "I'll meet you later, that's all," Roger said. "It's just that my friend — the one I told you about?"

  "Yes?"

  "I have to see him, that's all."

  "He's a very convenient friend."

  "I have to see him," Roger said.

  Amelia sighed.

  "I have to."

  Amelia sighed again.

  "Come on, let's go back," he said.

  "I'll give you my home number," she said. "I won't go back to the drugstore, not after I told him I had a headache."

  "All right."

  "Will you call me?"

  "Yes. Yes, I think so."

  "Why do you only think so?"

  "Because I ... Amelia, please don't . . . don't push me, huh? Just don't push me."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I'll try to call you. We'll have supper together."

  "Sure."

  They barely spoke on the subway ride back. They sat side by side, and occasionally Amelia would turn to look at him, but he was busy thinking about Molly and about what he had to do. It was foolish to even imagine any other way.

  He had to go to the police, that was all there was to it.

  He left her off on the corner of her block. It was almost twelve noon. The wind swept through the narrow street, and she clutched her collar to her throat and ducked her head.

  "Call me," she said.

  "I'll try."

  "I'll be waiting." She paused. In a whisper, she said, "I like the way you kiss, white man," and then she turned and went up the street and into one of the tenements.

  He watched her until she was out of sight, and then began walking toward Grover Avenue and the police station.

  6

  It was beginning to snow.

  The flakes were large and wet and they melted the moment they touched the asphalt streets, melted on the tops of parked automobiles, and on the lids of garbage cans standing alongside shining wet tenement stoops. In the park, on the stone wall bordering the edge of the park, and on the rolling ground and jutting boulders of the park itself, the snow was beginning to stick, covering only lightly and in patches, but sticking nonetheless. He walked alongside the stone wall with its pale-white, almost transparent covering of snow, and looked across at the police station and then took a deep breath and sucked in his belly and crossed the street.

  He went up the steps. There were seven of them.

  There were two doors. He tried the knob of the one on the left, but the door did not open. He reached for the knob directly to the right of the first one. The door opened on a very large room with grilled windows running its entire length on the left-hand side and with a large raised wooden counter that looked something like a judge's bench in front of the windows. A hand-lettered sign on top of the counter, bold black on white, read ALL VISITORS MUST STOP AT DESK. There were two uniformed policemen behind the muster desk. One of them was wearing sergeant's stripes. The other was sitting behind a switchboard and was wearing earphones. A railing had been constructed some four feet in front of the desk, with lead-pipe stanchions bolted to the floor, and with a horizontal piece of pipe forming the crossbar. An electric clock was on the wall opposite the desk. The time was twelve-fifteen. Two wooden benches flanked a hissing radiator on that same wall, and a small white sign, smudged, and lettered in black with the words DETECTIVE DIVISION, pointed to an iron-runged staircase that led to the upper story. The walls were painted a pale green and looked dirty.

  Two men were standing in front of the muster desk, both of them handcuffed to the pipe railing. A patrolman stood to the side of the two men as the desk sergeant asked them questions. Roger walked to one of the benches opposite the muster desk, and sat.

  "When did you pick them up?" the sergeant asked the patrolman.

  "As they were coming out, Sarge."

  "Where was that?"

  "1120 Ainsley."

  "What's that? Near Twelfth? Thirteenth?"

  "Thirteenth."

  "What's the name of the place?"

  "Abigail Frocks," the patrolman said.

  "She does?" the sergeant asked, and all the men — including the two in handcuffs — burst out laughing. Roger didn't see what was so funny.

  "It's a dress loft up there on Ainsley," the patrolman said. "I think they use it for storing stuff. Anyway, there's hardly ever anybody up there, except when they're making deliveries or pickups."

  "Just a loft, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "They got a store, too?"

  "Yeah."

  "In this precinct?"

  "Yeah, it's just a little place on Culver."

  "Abigail Frocks, huh?" the sergeant said, and all the men giggled again. "Okay, boys, what were you doing coming out of Abigail Frocks?" the sergeant said, and again everyone giggled.

  "We was after the pigeons," one of the men said, suppressing his laughter and becoming serious all at once. He seemed to be about twenty-five years old, badly in need of a haircut, and wearing a gray suede jacket with gray ribbing at the cuffs and at the waist.

  "What's your name, fella?" the sergeant asked.

  "Mancuso. Edward Mancuso."

  "All right, now what's this about the pigeons, Eddie?"

  "We don't have to tell him nothing," the second man said. He was about the same age as Mancuso, with the same shaggy haircut, and wearing a dark-brown overcoat. His trousers seemed too long for him. "They got us in here for no reason at all. We can sue them for false arrest, in fact."

  "What's your name?" the sergeant asked.

  "Frank Di Paolo, you know what false arrest is?"

  "Yeah, we know what false arrest is. What were you doing coming down the steps from that dress loft?"

  "I want a lawyer," Di Paolo said.

  "For what? We haven't even booked you yet."

  "You got nothing to book us on"

  "I found jimmy marks on the loft door," the patrolman said drily.

  "That
must've been from some other time it got knocked over," Di Paolo said. "You find any burglar's tools on us?"

  "He knows all about burglar's tools," the sergeant said, and then turned to Di Paolo and said, "You know all about burglar's tools, don't you?"

  "If you live in this crumby neighborhood, you learn all about everything," Di Paolo said.

  "Also about how to break and enter a dress loft and steal some clothes? Do you learn all about that?"

  "We was after the pigeons," Mancuso said.

  "What pigeons?"

  "Our pigeons."

  "In the dress loft, huh?"

  "No, on the roof."

  "You keep pigeons on the roof of that building?"

  "No, we keep pigeons on the roof of 2335 Twelfth Street, that's where."

  "What's that got to do with the dress loft?"

  "Nothing," Mancuso said.

  "We ain't got nothing to do with the loft, either," Di Paolo said. "We were only in that building because our pigeons were on the roof."

  "We only went up to get them," Mancuso said.

  "What's the matter?" the sergeant asked. "Don't your pigeons know how to fly?"

  The patrolman laughed.

  "They've got pigeons that don't know how to fly," the sergeant said, encouraged, and the patrolman laughed again.

  "They know how to fly, but sometimes they don't come back when you call them. So from where we were on our roof, we could see these two birds sitting on the roof of the building where the dress loft was in—"

  "Oh, you knew there was a dress loft in that building, huh?"

  "No, we didn't know until we got over there. When we was climbing to the roof, we saw the sign for the dress loft."

  "And decided to jimmy open the door while you were at it."

  "What jimmy? We were going up the roof for our pigeons."

  "Where are they?"

  "Where's what?"

  "The birds."

  "They flew away when we got up there."

  "I thought they didn't know how to fly."

  "Who said that? You said that, not us."

  A man came down the iron-runged steps leading into the muster room, and the men at the desk turned momentarily to look at him. He was well-dressed, clean-shaven, with eyes that slanted to give his face an almost Oriental look. He wore no hat, and his hair was a sandy brown, cut close to his head, but not in a crew cut. He was reading something, some form or other, as he crossed the room, and then he folded the form and put it in his inside jacket pocket and stopped at the desk. The sergeant looked up.

  "Dave, I'm going out to lunch," the man said. "Anybody calls for me, I'll be back around one-thirty, two o'clock."

  "Right, Steve," the sergeant said. "You recognize these two?" he asked.

  The man called Steve looked at Mancuso and Di Paolo and then shook his head. "No," he said. "Who are they?"

  "A couple of pigeon fanciers." The sergeant looked at the patrolman, and the patrolman laughed. "You don't make them, huh?"

  "No."

  The sergeant looked at Di Paolo and said, "You see this fellow here? He's one of the meanest cops in this precinct. Am I right, Steve?"

  The man, who was obviously a plainclothes detective, smiled and said, "Sure, sure."

  "I'm only telling you this because if you're smart you'll give your story to me, and not wait until he gets you upstairs. He's got a rubber hose up there, right, Steve?"

  "Two rubber hoses," the detective answered. "And a lead pipe."

  "There ain't no story to give," Mancuso said.

  "We was going up after the pigeons, and—"

  "See you, Dave," the detective said.

  "—that's the truth. We spotted them on the roof from where we was flying the pigeons—"

  "So long, Steve. In February?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Flying your pigeons on a day you could freeze your ass off?"

  "What's that got to do with . . ."

  Roger stood up suddenly. The detective had gone through the door, and was heading down the front steps of the building. The desk sergeant looked up as Roger reached the door, and then — as though noticing him for the first time — asked, "Did you want something, mister?"

  "No, that's all right," Roger said. He opened the door quickly. Behind him, he could hear Di Paolo patiently explaining about the pigeons again. He closed the door. He came down the front steps and looked first to his left and then to his right, and then saw the detective walking down Grover Avenue, his hands in the pockets of his gray tweed overcoat, his head ducked against the wind. Swiftly, he began following.

  He could not have said what it was that had forced him to rise suddenly from that bench. Perhaps it was the way they had those two fellows trapped, the way they were trying to make out those fellows had tried to rob the dress loft when it was plain to see that all they'd really been after was their pigeons up on the roof. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was the way the detective had smiled when the sergeant said he was one of the meanest cops in the precinct. He had smiled and said, "Sure, sure," as if he wasn't really a mean cop at all, but simply a guy who had a job to do and the job only accidentally happened to deal with men who maybe were or maybe weren't trying to break into dress lofts.

  There was something good about that detective's face, Roger couldn't say what. He only knew that there were bums in this world and there were nice guys, and this detective struck him as being a nice guy, the same way Parker in the luncheonette had struck him immediately as being a bum.

  He sure walks fast, though, Roger thought.

  He quickened his pace, keeping sight of the gray overcoat. The detective was tall, not as tall as Roger himself, but at least six-one or six-two, and he had very broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and he walked with the quick surefootedness of a natural athelete, even on pavements that were getting very sloppy with fallen snow. The snow was still wet and heavy, large flakes filling the air like a Christmas card, everything gray and white and sharp, with the buildings standing out in rust-red warmth. Everyone always thought of the city as being black and white, but during a snowstorm you suddenly saw the colors of the buildings, the red bricks and the green window frames and the yellows and the blues of rooms only glimpsed behind partially . Tcvece ias coot Vn. X\e, Following the detective, he began to feel pretty good again. He had always liked snow, and it was beginning to snow pretty heavy now, with the streets and sidewalks turning white, and with the snow making a funny squeaking sound under his shoes as he walked into the large swirling flakes. In Dick Tracy, whenever it snowed, the guy who drew the cartoon always made these big round white circles, they filled the whole page almost, he sure knew how to make it snow. It snowed in Dick Tracy sometimes three, four times every winter.

  The detective had turned the corner into a side street, and Roger quickened his step, slipping on the sidewalk, regaining his balance, and then turning the corner and seeing the detective stop in front of a restaurant just short of the middle of the block. The detective stood with his hands in his pockets, his head bent, hatless, his brown hair covered with snowflakes and looking white from a distance. He was probably waiting for someone, Roger thought, and then looked around for a place where he could stop without attracting attention. That man up there is a detective, he reminded himself. He knows all about following people and about being followed, so make up your mind quick, do something. Either walk past him, or turn back, or find a place where you can hide, or pretend to be waiting, no, I'll go right up to him, Roger thought. I'll just go right up to him and tell him what I have to tell him, what's the sense of kidding around?

  He was walking toward the detective when the taxi-cab pulled up, and the woman got out.

  The woman was beautiful.

  Roger was perhaps eight or ten feet away from her when she got out of the cab, her skirt pulling back over her knees momentarily as she slid over on the seat her hand moving swiftly to lower the skirt as she paid the driver. The detective extended his hand to her and s
he took it and raised her face and her eyes to his, a rare and lovely smile coming onto her face, God she was beautiful. Her hair was black, and her eyes were a very deep brown, and she smiled up at the detective with her eyes and her mouth and her entire face, and then stood beside him on the sidewalk and kissed him briefly on the mouth, not on the cheek or the jaw, but a swift sudden kiss on the mouth. She moved away from him and took his hand, her fingers lacing into his, and they began walking toward the door of the restaurant. The snow caught in her hair at once, and she shook her head and tilted her face, grinning, and he thought at first she was one of those girls who get the cutes whenever they're around a man. But no, it was something else, he couldn't quite place what it was at first. And then, as they opened the door and walked into the restaurant, he realized that the woman was simply very very happy to be with this man.

  Roger had never been loved that way.

  He opened the restaurant door, and followed them inside.

  Abruptly, he thought of the girl Molly.

  7

  He had walked over to her table across the bar, and she had looked up at him briefly and then gone back to her drink. She was drinking something in a small stemmed glass, a whiskey sour or something, he figured. She looked up at him with disinterest, and then turned back to her drink with disinterest, as if she were equally bored with everything and everyone in the world.

  "I'm sorry I stole your table," Roger said, and smiled.

  "Forget it," she told him.

  He stood by the table, waiting for her to ask him to have a seat, but the girl just kept looking at the open top of her glass, where some white foam was clinging to the inside, a kind of empty despair on her face, a sadness that made her look even more plain than she actually was.

  "Well," he said, "I just wanted to apologize," and he started to move away from the table, thinking she wasn't interested after all, didn't want him to sit with her. And then, all at once he realized that the girl probably wasn't used to approaches from men, didn't know how to handle ' a man coming to her table and flirting with her. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to the table again, and said, "Mind if I sit down?"