Like Love

by Ed McBain

  “You were too rough with him,” Hawes said. He said it suddenly and tersely. He did not turn to look at Kling.

  “He may have killed them,” Kling answered tonelessly.

  “And maybe he didn’t. Who the hell are you? The Lord High Executioner?”

  “You want to fight with me, Cotton?” Kling asked.

  “No. I’m just telling you.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you there are good cops and shitty cops, and I’d hate to see you become one of the shitty ones.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’d better watch it, Bert.”

  “Thanks.”

  They stood on the sidewalk for a moment as the homeward-bound office workers rushed past them. There didn’t seem much else to say for the moment. Like polite strangers, they stood with their coats open and their hands in their pockets.

  “You going back uptown?” Kling asked.

  “I thought you might want to type up the report,” Hawes said. He paused, and then caustically added, “You asked all the questions.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Sure. So you do the report.”

  “You sore?”

  “Yes.”

  “Screw you,” Kling said, and he walked off into the crowd.

  Hawes stared after him for a moment, and then shook his head. He took his hands out of his pockets, hesitated, put his hands back into his pockets again, and then walked toward the subway kiosk on the corner.

  He was glad to be away from Kling and away from the squadroom. He was glad to be with Christine Maxwell who came in from the kitchen of her apartment carrying a tray with a Martini shaker and two iced Martini glasses. He watched her as she walked toward him. She had let her blond hair grow long since he’d first known her, and it hung loose around the oval of her face now, sleekly reflecting pinpoint ticks of light from the fading sun that filtered through the window. She had taken off her shoes the moment she’d come home from work, but she still wore her stockings and she padded across the room silently, walking with an intuitively feminine grace, insinuatingly female, her straight black skirt tightening over each forward thrust of thigh and leg, the cocktail tray balanced on one long tapered hand, the other hand brushing at an eyelash that had fallen to her cheek. She wore a blue silk blouse that echoed the lilac blue of her eyes, clung loosely to the soft curve of her bosom. She put down the tray and felt his eyes on her and smiled, “Stop it, you make me nervous.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Looking at me that way.” Quickly, she poured both glasses full to the brim.

  “What way?”

  “You’re undressing me.” Christine handed him one of the Martinis and hastily added, “With your eyes.”

  “That would be a most impractical way to undress you,” Hawes said. “With my eyes.”

  “Yes, but you’re doing it, anyway.”

  “I’m simply looking at you. I enjoy looking at you.” He lifted his glass in the air, said, “Here’s looking at you,” and swallowed a huge gulp of gin and vermouth.

  Christine sat in the chair opposite him, pulling her legs under her, sipping at her drink. She looked over the edge of the glass and said, “I think you ought to marry me. Then you could look at me all day long.”

  “I can’t marry you,” Hawes said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because good cops die young.”

  “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Are you insinuating I’m not a good cop?”

  “I thank you’re an excellent cop. But you’re not exactly young any more.”

  “That’s true. I’m beginning to creak a little in the joints.” He paused and said, “But good cops die old, too. In fact, all cops die, sooner or later. Good ones, bad ones, honest ones, crooked ones…”

  “Crooked cops? The ones who take bribes?”

  “That’s right. They die, too.”

  Christine shook her head, a mischievous grin on her mouth. “Crooked cops never die,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No. They’re just paid away.”

  Hawes winced and drained his glass. “I think you went pretty far for that one,” he said.

  “I think you went pretty far to avoid discussing our imminent marriage.”

  “Our eminent marriage, you mean.”

  “I mean imminent, but it’ll be eminent, too.”

  “You know, I have the feeling I’m drunk,” Hawes said, “and all I’ve had is a single drink.”

  “I’m an intoxicating woman,” Christine said.

  “Come on over here and intoxicate me a little.”

  Christine shook her head. “Nope. I want another drink first.” She drained her glass and poured two fresh Martinis. “Besides, we were discussing marriage. Are you an honest cop?”

  “Absolutely,” Hawes said, picking up his drink.

  “Don’t you think honest cops should seek honest women?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then why won’t you make me an honest woman?”

  “You are an honest woman. Only an honest woman could mix a Martini like this one.”

  “What’s wrong with it, and you’re changing the subject again.”

  “I was thinking of your legs,” Hawes said.

  “I thought you were thinking of my Martinis.”

  “That’s why it sounded as though I were changing the subject.”

  “Now I feel a little drunk,” Christine said. She shook her head, as if to clear it. “How was that again?”

  “What’s the matter?” Hawes asked. “Don’t you dig Ionesco?”

  “I not only don’t dig him, I also don’t understand him.”

  “Come over here on the couch, and I’ll explain Ionesco.”

  “No,” Christine said. “You’ll make advances.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think a man and a woman should be married before he’s permitted to make advances.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “Sure.”

  “What were you thinking about my legs?” Christine asked.

  “How nice they are.”

  “Nice? That’s a fine word to describe a woman’s legs.”

  “Shapely.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well-curved.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Splendid.”

  “Splendid?”

  “Mmmm. I’d like to take off your stockings,” Hawes said.

  Why?”

  “So I can touch your splendid legs.”

  “No advances,” Christine said. “Remember?”

  “Right, I forgot. I’d like to take off your stockings so I can see your splendid legs better.”

  “You’d like to take off my stockings,” Christine said, “so you can reach up under my skirt to ungarter them.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but now that you bring it up…”

  “You brought it up.”

  “Are you wearing a girdle?”

  “Nope.”

  “A garter belt?”

  “Yep.”

  “I like garter belts.”

  “All men do.”

  “Why should all men like garter belts? And how do you know what all men like?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No,” Hawes said.

  “If we were married, I wouldn’t have any opportunity to know what all men like,” Christine said. “You’d be the only man in my life.”

  “You mean there are other men in your life?”

  Christine shrugged.

  “Who are they?” Hawes asked. “I’ll arrest them.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Obstructing the course of true love.”

  “Do you love me?” Christine asked.

  “Come here, and I’ll tell you.”

  Christine smiled.

  “Come on.”

  She smiled again. “How long would y
ou say we’ve known each other, Cotton?” she asked.

  “Oh, let me see. Four years?”

  “Right. How many times would you say we’ve made love in those four years?”

  “Twice,” Hawes said.

  “No seriously.”

  “Oh, seriously. Seriously, we’ve made love… how much is four times three hundred and sixty-five?”

  “Come on, seriously.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Christine. Why do you ask?”

  “I think we ought to get married.”

  “Oh,” Hawes said, with an air of discovery. “Is that what you were leading up to? Ah-ha!”

  “Don’t you like making love to me?”

  “I love making love to you.”

  “Then why don’t you marry me?”

  “Come here, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Christine stood up abruptly. The move surprised him. A serious look had come onto her face suddenly, and it gave a curious purposefulness to her sudden rise. She walked to the window in her stockinged feet and stood there in silhouette for a moment, the dusky sky outside touching her face with the burnished wash of sunset, and then she pulled down the shade and turned toward Hawes with the same serious expression on her face, as if she were about to cry. He watched her and wondered how this had got so serious all at once. Or perhaps it had been serious all along, he wasn’t quite sure now. She took a step toward him and then stopped and looked at him with a long deep look, as if trying to resolve something in her own mind, and then gave a quiet sigh, just a short intake of breath, and unbuttoned her blouse. He watched her in the darkened room as she undressed. She hung the blouse over the back of a straight chair, and then unclasped her brassiere and put that on the seat of the chair. She pulled back her skirt and ungartered her stockings, and he watched her legs as she rolled the stockings down over the calves and then the ankles and then rose and put them over the back of the chair and stood facing him in her panties and garter belt, and then took off the panties and put them on the seat of the chair, too.

  She walked toward him in the dim silence of the room, wearing only the black garter belt, and she stopped before him where he sat on the couch, and she said, “I do love you, Cotton. You know I love you, don’t you?”

  She took his face between both slender hands, and she cocked her head to one side, as if seeing his face for the first time, studying it, and then one hand moved gently to the white streak in his red hair, touching it, and then trailing over his temple, and down the bridge of his nose, and then touching his mouth in exploration in the darkness.

  “Nothing to say?” she asked. “Nothing to say, my darling?”

  She stood before the couch where he sat, looking down at him with a curiously wistful smile on her mouth. He put his arms around her waist and drew her gently close, cradling his head on her breasts and hearing the sudden frantic beating of her heart and thinking there really was nothing to say to her, and wondering all at once what love was. He had known her for such a long time, it seemed, had seen her undress in exactly the same way so many times, had held her close to him in just this way, had heard the beating of her heart beneath the full breast. She was Christine Maxwell, beautiful, bright, passionate, exciting, and he enjoyed being with her more than any other person in the world. But holding her close, feeling the beating heart and sensing the wistful smile that still clung to her mouth, and knowing the serious expression was still in her eyes, he wondered whether any of this added up to love, and he suddenly thought of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow on the bed in the apartment filled with illuminating gas.

  His hands suddenly tightened on Christine’s back.

  He suddenly wanted to hold her desperately close to him.

  She kissed him on the mouth and then sank to the couch beside him and stretched her long legs, and looked at him once more very seriously and then the wistful smile expanded, and she said, “It’s because it makes us look French.”

  “What?” he said, puzzled.

  “The garter belt,” Christine explained, That’s why men like it.”

  * * * *

  8

  Tommy Barlow had been a strapping, well-muscled fellow, six feet and one inch tall, weighing a hundred and seventy-five pounds, with a high forehead and a square jaw and an over-all look of understated power. The understated power had been completely muted by death-there is nothing so powerless as a corpse-but even in death, Tommy Barlow bore very little resemblance to his younger brother.

  The brother opened the door for Carella and Meyer four days after the burial of Barlow. Both men were wearing trench coats, but not because they wanted to feel like detectives. They wore them only because a light April drizzle was falling.

  “Amos Barlow?” Meyer said.

  “Yes?”

  Meyer flashed the tin. “Detectives Carella and Meyer. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Can I see that again, please?” Barlow said.

  Meyer, who was the most patient cop in the precinct, if not the entire city, held up his shield again. His patience was an acquired trait, the legacy of his father Max, who’d been something of a practical joker in his day. When Meyer’s mother went to Max and told him she was pregnant again, old Max simply couldn’t believe it. He thought it was past the time when such miracles of God could happen to his wife, who had already experienced change of life. Unappreciative of the turntable subtleties of a fate that had played a supreme practical joke on the supreme practical joker, he plotted his own gleeful revenge. When the baby was born, he named him Meyer. Meyer was a perfectly good name, and would have fit the child beautifully if his surname happened to be Schwartz or Goldblatt or even Lipschitz. Unfortunately, his surname was Meyer, and in combination with his given name, the infant emerged like a stutter: Meyer Meyer. Even so, the name wouldn’t have been so bad if the family hadn’t been Orthodox Jews living in a predominatingly Gentile neighborhood. Whenever any of the kids needed an excuse for beating up a Jew-and they didn’t often need excuses-it was always easiest to find the one with the double-barreled monicker. Meyer Meyer learned patience: patience toward the father who had inflicted upon him the redundant name, patience toward the kids who regularly sent him home in tatters. Patiently, he waited for the day when he could name his father Max Max. It never came. Patiently, he waited for the day when he could catch one of the goyim alone and beat hell out of him in a fair fight without overwhelming odds. That day came rarely. But Meyer’s patience became a way of life, and eventually he adjusted to his father’s little gag, and the name he would carry to the end of his days. He adjusted beautifully. Unless one chose to mention the tired old saw about repression leaving its scars. Maybe something does have to give, who knows? Meyer Meyer, though he was only thirty-seven years old, was completely bald.

  Patiently, he held up the shield. “Do you have an identification card?” Meyer dug into his wallet patiently and held up his lucite-encased I.D. card.

  “That isn’t a very good picture,” Barlow said.

  “No,” Meyer admitted.

  “But I guess it’s you. What did you want to ask me?”

  “May we come in?” Meyer said. They were standing outside on the front stoop of the two-story frame house in Riverhead, and whereas the rain wasn’t heavy, it was sharp and penetrating. Barlow studied them for a moment, and then said, “Of course,” and opened the door wide. They followed him into the house.

  He was a short, slight man, no more than five feet eight inches tall, weighing about a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Carella estimated that he was no older than twenty-two or twenty-three, and yet he was beginning to lose the hair at the back of his head. He walked at a slightly crooked angle and with a decided limp. He carried a cane in his right hand, and he used it as though he’d been familiar with it for a long long time. The cane was black, Carella noticed, a heavy cane with curving head ornately decorated with silver or pewter, it was difficult to tell which.