by Ed McBain
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 hazard.”
“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?”
“Well, 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 barely 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 table top. “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.
Thursday was Halloween, so naturally nothing happened on either case. That’s because on Halloween there are ghouls and goblins and witches and spooks stirring on the sweet October air, and they put a hex on anybody trying to do good. The detectives of the 87th were trying to do good by solving those several murders, but it was no use, not on Halloween. So both cases sat right where they were. Besides, there was plenty of other mischief to take care of on that Thursday, October 31.
Carella knew, of course, that Halloween was in reality the day before All Saints’ Day, a church festival celebrated on November 1 each year in honor of all the saints. He further knew that All Saints’ Day was sometimes called All-hallows (hallow meaning saint), and Halloween, before it got bastardized, was originally called Allhallows Even (even being another way of saying eve), and even even became contracted to e’en, hence Hallowe’en, and finally everybody dropped the apostrophe and it became Halloween, a long way from Allhallows Even perhaps, but that’s the way the witch’s brew bubbles, bubeluh.
To Carella, Allhallows Even sounded a great deal more pious than Halloween, but pious was the last thing Halloween had become in America. So perhaps the bastardized and contracted handle was really quite descriptive of an unofficial holiday that had evolved over the years into an excuse for malicious mischief across the length and breadth of the nation. The mischief had been present when Carella was a boy too, but it all seemed far more innocent in those days. In those days he would roam the October streets wearing a fleece-lined pseudo–World War I leather aviator’s helmet with goggles, carrying either a piece of colored chalk (or white chalk, for that matter, though colored chalk was far more desirable); or else a stick stripped from an orange crate, the end of which had been chalked; or else a sock full of flour. The idea was to chase a person, preferably a girl, and either chalk a line down her back, or slap her with the stick, thereby chalking her back, or hit her with the sock full of flour, which also left a mark on her back. You then shouted “Halloween!” and ran like hell, usually giggling. The girl giggled too. Everybody giggled. It was good clean fun, or so it seemed in Carella’s memory. At night, the kids would build an enormous bonfire in the middle of the city street, tossing into it wood scavenged from empty lots, old furniture and crates begged from apartment-building superintendents during the long, exciting day. The flames would leap skyward, shooting sparks and cinders, the boys would run into the street like hobgoblins themselves, to throw more fuel onto the fire, and then the collection of wood exhausted itself, and the flames dwindled, and the girls all went upstairs while the boys stood around the smoldering fire and peed on it.
That was Halloween, Carella thought.
Today…
Well, today, for example, two kids had broken the plate-glass window of a bakery shop on Ainsley Avenue because the owner had refused to give them money for UNICEF. They had gone into the shop carrying their orange-and-black milk containers with the UNICEF wrappers and asked the man to contribute to the relief fund and the man had said, Get the hell out of my shop. So they had got out of his shop and hurled two bricks through his window besides, executing the trick because they’d been refused the treat. Now, surely there was something insane about smashing a man’s window because he refused to contribute to the welfare of starving children all over the world, something almost as insane as fighting wars to preserve peace. It seemed to Carella that a man accused of assault could not reasonably offer as his defense the statement, “I punched him in the nose because I
wanted to prevent a fight.” This was no more reasonable than smashing a plate-glass window costing $500 merely because some bastard had refused to contribute a nickel to a worthwhile cause. With this sort of reasoning afoot, even on Halloween when all reason was distorted, the lunatics were well on their way to taking over the asylum.
Other “mischievous” happenings that day seemed to confirm the uprising of the inmates.
Six boys, inspired by the thought that this was Halloween—and anything goes on Halloween because boys will be boys and what’s wrong with letting go once a year—six boys dragged a twelve-year-old girl into an alley and raped her one after the other because she was carrying a shopping bag full of Halloween treats that she refused to share with them. The boys ranged in age from sixteen to eighteen, and none of them would have given a seventh-grade girl a glance had this not been the day of the year when the banshees were supposed to howl.
Over on South Eleventh, a high-school senior shoved her classmate off the roof because she insisted on chalking “Irene Loves Pete” in a heart on the roof’s brick parapet. Irene explained to the police that she did not love Pete, she really loved Joey, and she had pleaded with her friend not to write such libel on the wall, but her friend had insisted, so she had shoved her over the low parapet. She could not explain why she had shouted, “Halloween!” as her friend plummeted the seven stories to the pavement below.
On Culver Avenue, a grownup man chasing a fifteen-year-old boy who had sprayed shaving cream onto the windows of his parked automobile only happened to knock down a woman wheeling a baby carriage, which baby carriage and its four-month-old occupant rolled into the street to be squashed flat by an oncoming milk truck. The man told the police that he was of course sorry about the accident, but why didn’t they do something about all this rampant vandalism?
On The Stem, near Twentieth Street, two enterprising professionals entered a delicatessen wearing rubber Halloween masks, shouted “Trick or treat!” at the owner of the place, and promptly stuck loaded revolvers across the counter. The owner, imbued with a bit of Halloween spirit himself, threw a pound and a half of pastrami at one of the men and then stabbed the other with a very sharp carving knife that entered his throat just where the rubber mask ended. The second man, his mask and his coat dripping very good lean pastrami, fired at the owner and left him dead, and a kid running past the shop did a little excited jig in the doorway and chanted, “Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.”