“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.