“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.