She hated him on sight.
“I beg your pardon,” she said.
Kling looked up. “Yes, miss?”
“I’d like to see Detective Carella, please.”
“Not here right now,” Kling answered. “Can I help you?”
“Who are you?” Cindy asked.
“Detective Kling.”
“How do you do?” She paused. “You did say Detective Kling?”
“That’s right.”
“You seem so”—she hesitated on the word, as if it were loathsome to her—”young. To be a detective, I mean.”
Kling sensed her hostility immediately, and immediately reacted in a hostile manner. “Well, you see,” he said, “I’m the boss’s son. That’s how I got to be a detective so fast.”
“Oh, I see.” She looked around the squadroom, obviously annoyed by Kling, and the room, and Carella’s absence, and the world. “When will he be back? Carella?”
“Didn’t say. He’s out making some calls.”
With a ghoulishly sweet grin, Cindy said, “And they left you to mind the store. How nice.”
“Yeah,” Kling answered, “they left me to mind the store.” He was not smiling, because he was not enjoying this little snotnose who came up here with her Saturday Evening Post face and her college-girl talk. “So since I’m minding the store, what is it you want, miss? I’m busy.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. I’ll wait for Carella, if you don’t mind.” She was opening the gate in the slatted rail divider when Kling came out of his chair swiftly and abruptly.
“Hold it right there!” he snapped.
“Wh-what?” Cindy asked, her eyes opening wide.
“Just hold it, miss!” Kling shouted, and to Cindy’s shocked surprise, he pulled a pistol from a holster clipped to his belt and pointed it right at her heart.
“Get in here,” he said. “Don’t reach into that bag!”
“What? Are you…?”
“In!” Kling shouted.
She obeyed him instantly, because she was certain he was going to shoot her dead in the next moment. She had heard stories about cops who lost their minds and went around shooting anything that moved. She was also beginning to wonder whether he really was a cop, and not simply a stray hoodlum who had wandered up here.
“Empty your bag on the desk,” Kling said.
“Listen, what the hell do you think you’re…?”
“Empty it, miss,” he said menacingly.
“I’m going to sue you, you know,” she said coldly, and turned over her bag, spilling the contents onto the desk.
Kling went through the pile of junk rapidly. “What’s in that folder?” he asked.
“Some stuff for Detective Carella.”
“On the desk.”
She put the folder down. Kling loosened the ties on it, and stuck his hand into it. He kept the gun trained at Cindy’s middle, and she watched him with growing exasperation.
“All right?” she asked at last.
“Put your hands up over your head as high as you can get them.”
“Listen, I don’t have to…”
“Miss,” he said warningly, and she raised her hands.
“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 .38, 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 squadroom? 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 .38, 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, eye shadow, 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?”