Ladyfingers

by Shepard Rifkin

  And for more impressive proof, we would have that thoughtful sign in the lobby by the booth. Boy, oh boy, that was a corpus delicti all neatly delivered to the enemy. Corpus delicti, the body of the evidence.

  I sighed. I had put my neck inside the grip of the enemy, just the way a cigar end goes inside a cigar-cutter. That's the kind of a picture Hanrahan would like. I put my neck even further inside. I took the list over to Kernel-man's desk. Kemelman was a sergeant who had started out the same time I had. He made sergeant and was run down on traffic duty. He had a steel plate in his knee and he would never be able to move faster than a walk. They put him into Communications. Kemelman knew he would never make more than sergeant. It made him somewhat sour.

  "Hi, Sanchez."

  "How're you, Harvey?"

  "So-so. What's up?"

  I gave him the list. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So?"

  We had never been more than casual acquaintances. He was jealous of my promotions. I had to persuade him to be good and to cover him if there was a recoil. And there were going to be severe flames shooting backwards from the breech; anyone in the neighborhood was going to be burned.

  "Call all of them," I said. He whistled. "Get the deans of the medical schools. The editors of the journals. The heads of the medical societies. The superintendents of the hospitals. The people in the looney bins in charge of admissions. The senior psychiatrist in charge of each ward. Tell them it is the wish of the PC that they be in the Police Academy auditorium tomorrow morning at nine."

  "On whose authority?"

  If I said "Mine," he'd say, "Yeah, but I need more." It would end right there.

  If I said "Hanrahan," he'd say something like, "Well, have him call me."

  So I'd call Hanrahan, make my pitch and he'd pull out a cigar and light it. That would give him ten seconds to pick out a crushing remark, shape it, and pat it into perfection. Then he'd wind up and let me have it full in the face.

  If he thought my idea would have a chance of bringing up a good lead he'd say something like "You're getting desperate, Sanchez. You're like a bush leaguer in his first game in the big time. You're way out in right field. You grab this ball that comes bouncing your way. You give it all you got so it'll reach home plate and it goes straight up in the air somewhere short of second base. And not only that; you fall flat on your face. How d'you think it'll look with the PC if I let you make all those deans and professors and big time psychiatrists get up at five? They got a lot of political leverage and guess where the end of that lever would be."

  I would tell him.

  "Right," he would say. "Think up something better." And word would go out to Communications to cool anything coming from me. Just in case I decided to take a chance and go over his head.

  So when Kemelman asked me on whose authority, I was all ready.

  "Hanrahan," I said, looking bored.

  "Hanrahan, eh?" He looked at the bottom of each page. He looked at the top.

  I took each page and casually wrote, "Hanrahan. Chief of Detectives. By P. Sanchez, Det. 1st Grade."

  Now Kemelman was covered. In case there was hell to pay all he had to do was point to my handwriting. And there'd be hell to pay.

  Nobody asks a couple hundred big shots to show up in downtown Manhattan on overnight notice. Many of them would have to leave home by 6:00 a.m. to make it in time. That meant they'd have to get up at five, an hour dedicated to sleeping in civilized society.

  I took the top sheet and wrote on it, "All travel expenses will be paid by the New York Police Department on submission of vouchers."

  "Mention that," I said. That was the convincer for Kemelman. His back relaxed from its suspicious stiffening.

  I figured it would take some of the steam from the complaints of those coming from Godforsaken places like Philadelphia or Bridgeport.

  "I'll get on it right away," Kemelman said.

  I went downstairs and out the back entrance. That put me on Center Market Place, the little street back of headquarters.

  As I was unlocking my car I saw McCartney coming out of the basement photo section.

  I nodded. He looked pleased with himself. He walked over. He looked up in the air. I followed his eyes. He was looking at a huge gunsmith's sign. It was a wooden .38 police special blown up five hundred times.

  "I gotta take your picture under that," McCartney said. "You look like a detective in the movies. Very tough. Very capable. Like you could solve anything." He grinned and put a stick of gum into his big red face. "Right?"

  "What's with you?" I asked.

  "I made a pinch," he said, beaming.

  "A big one?"

  "Here's this jerk come into the diamond market a couple hours ago," he said, folding his arms and leaning back against the dusty fender. "I don't like his looks. I follow him. He stops at Warshow's booth. He gives Warshow a note. He puts his hand in his pocket. I move close. I pretend I'm looking at the diamonds. I read the note upside down."

  "Someone's private mail?"

  "Yeah. Some detectives do that, I hear. So the first words I read say, This is a stickup.' There are sixty-seven words more. I counted 'em later. Full of advice on how not to get shot; how he is a desperate guy, don't fool around with him because he's dangerous. Warshow was still reading the note when I get my arm around the guy's throat and slam his gun arm so hard the guy's muscles were still paralyzed ten minutes later. Up at Criminal Identification they had an FBI want on him. They want him in St. Louis too. And Lansing. I'm goin' to the movies to celebrate. They got a good movie about a detective. Wanna come?"

  "Nope."

  "I bet they don't show the two hours I spent typing up all the goddamn forms I hadda go through before I brought him down for the mug shots."

  All detectives think all movies about detectives are ridiculous.

  "No, thanks."

  "What's up?"

  I hesitated. But I needed a sympathetic ear.

  "Keep your lip buttoned?"

  "Whaddya think?"

  I told him what I had just arranged with Kemelman. I told him I had signed each page with Hanrahan's name.

  McCartney put two more sticks of gum into his face and then made a brilliant remark.

  "You're takin' a big chance."

  I looked at him. I took out the car key. I unlocked the door. I looked at him again.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "You know what you're lettin' yourself in for?"

  I was like a man running at full speed in strange woods. Branches were whipping me in the face, I kept stumbling over hidden roots, and back of me was a big nasty bear galloping easily with his big fangs outstretched to sink themselves up to the gum line into my ass. The going is bad. Suddenly I see what might be a trail. It's not as good as a concrete sidewalk, and I don't know where it goes. But it might become a path where I can jack up the speed and light my afterburners. The path might become a dirt road. The dirt road might become a paved road. And there I might hitchhike onto Easy Street.

  Might, might, might, might, might!

  "You ever consider it carefully?" McCartney went on.

  "It ever occur to you that you have a big fat mouth?"

  "You don't have to get sore about it."

  "Yeah, I don't have to listen to you either."

  He angrily tore the wrappers from his two remaining sticks of gum and shoved them in. He was getting steamed up himself. That made me feel better. I told him thanks for cleaning my fender. I got in the car. He took the door handle and slammed the door. I sure was meeting up with a lot of door slammers lately. I leaned out the window and called, "McCartney."

  He had gone three paces. He stopped.

  "McCartney," I repeated softly.

  "Yeah?" He was sure I was going to apologize. He walked back.

  "McCartney," I said, "I-"

  He stood by the door with a smug look, trying to knock that big mass of gum into shape.

  "Yeah, Pablo?"

  " 'Where's the pony?' " I said
, and pulled away.

  I felt better till I reached Houston Street. Then I began thinking about the swindle I was pulling on the girl up at the Academy. I thought of Kemelman. At least I had covered them by using my own name and signing it. But I was going out all the way. And sawing it off, just like they did in movie cartoons.

  I began to feel jittery. At 14th Street I almost went through a red light. I hit the brakes. They let out a wild shriek that turned everyone's head. I was five feet over the crosswalk. I backed up as the cop on traffic duty and about two hundred pedestrians hated me in unanimous silence. Boy, oh boy, this waiting was going to be bad.

  Going up 4th Avenue I kept a sharp lookout for the lights. I tried keeping my mind blank. No good. My mind would not obey orders. It kept gnawing away at my composure like a starved dog at a rich bone.

  I yielded and let it alone. I thought of roulette.

  It was worse than playing roulette. In roulette you put your bet down and watched the wheel spin. If you knew you were going to be nervous for the few seconds it would take for the wheel to come to a halt and end your suspense, you could shake your cigarette out of the pack, search for matches, strike one, inhale to get your cigarette going, shake out the match, find an ashtray, close your matches, and put them away. If pressed for something else to do, you could always make a production out of putting away your pack of cigarettes.

  By the time you'd finished with this routine the wheel would have come to a stop and the little ball would be at rest; red or black, win or lose, it would be all over. You had succeeded in giving your tension something to amuse itself with; your hand had something to do a lot better than chewing fingernails. You could even chat with the other players while you waited for the ball to bounce itself to immobility.

  But who the hell do I chat with? And this business with the doctors was going to make me a lot of tsoores. Tsoores is Jewish for trouble. And it wasn't going to take a minute either. This big wheel was going to spin for about fifteen hours. You can't spend fifteen hours lighting cigarettes gracefully. So how do you spend it?

  14

  SO I HAD NOTHING TO DO UNTIL THE NEXT morning at nine except wait. The hardest thing there is.

  I found a place to park right in front of the house. This was a miracle and if I had been superstitious I would have taken it for a good sign. As it was, I ascribed it to clean living and the reasonable assumption that I had to have a good piece of luck once in a while. I tossed Spring 7-3100 on the front seat and walked four blocks to a movie.

  It was a hot French import-a feast of bare breasts and behinds and extreme close-ups of faces panting in ecstasy. Very close mike work. The whole theater was blasted with the oncoming of the orgasm. As far as interesting characters went, however, it was famine.

  I walked out after fifteen minutes. Another two and a half bucks shot to hell.

  I don't care what anyone does in bed. The variations on that are predictably small, in spite of the Kama Sutra and weird Chinese discoveries. What really interests me are the maneuvers involved before the lady gets near the bed. I walked down the street, feeling the pleasure of thinking about something else besides what I was getting paid to think about. I went on with my mental exercise.

  I was getting on well, feeling superior to all the people still sitting there panting happily in the dark of the theater. But all I accomplished with this invigorating logic was a sudden invasion of my imagination by a hot image of Irene without her clothes.

  I had almost twelve hours to kill. Eight hours' sleep would be enough. That left four hours for someone warm and herbivorous, including travel time. Yes, I would take Irene home.

  What I really should have done was go home, take a leisurely bath, drink a glass of hot tea with a slice of lemon and a big jolt of gold rum, and just go to sleep.

  Instead I dropped into a bar and phoned Irene. She let the phone ring three times before lifting it up with that phony, languorous, ladylike tone of hers. And the goddamn phone was at her elbow.

  "Hi, Irene," I said.

  "Yes?" she said coldly.

  "How are things?" Even I could sense my phony cheerfulness. What the hell, that made two of us.

  But she cut right to the heart of it.

  "Looking to get laid?"

  "Not only that," I said, "but I'm going to take you out for lobster." She loved lobster.

  "How do I get home?"

  That's when I blew it. "In style, baby," I said. "I give you a subway token."

  I never got used to the fact that Irene had no sense of humor. I added quickly that I was only kidding, but by then she was off on a long jumbled speech, something like a Canadian rapids. In it from time to time I would spot little islands of coherence for which I would desperately strike out and even hold onto for a moment, but then the sheer mass of her words would pull me loose again.

  She had met someone nice who took her home. Nice. On the other hand guess who was a rude son of a bitch! He took her home. To her door. In a cab. She talked in italics when she was mad. He never made a pass at her. (That I didn't believe, but I had sense enough to keep quiet.) Unlike other people she could mention, Harry was a gentleman. On second thought, she decided to mention me. She mentioned me.

  "Irene," I said. "Irene. Irene, baby."

  No good.

  "Irene," I said, giving up, "if you want to hang up, go ahead."

  We had a fight once where I hung up first and she had never let me forget it.

  "Irene, hang up."

  Nothing doing.

  "Irene, if you don't hang up, I'll hang up."

  "Don't you dare, you son of a bitch!"

  "Irene, why don't you hang up?"

  "I'm not finished!"

  The operator asked me for another nickel.

  "Irene," I said. "The phone company wants a nickel. You're not going to hang up. I'm not going to hang up. The phone company is going to hang up."

  She screamed at me to put in another nickel.

  I said I didn't have it.

  "Liar!"

  She was right. But there was no chance of her proving it and I was not going to let myself be billed by the operator for the privilege of being yelled at by Irene.

  "Last chance, Irene. One, two…"

  She hung up. I hung up slowly, feeling virtuous. I had been a gentleman to the end. No nookey, but a gentleman. As I stepped out, the booth door closed viciously on my cut hand. I let out a muffled curse which convinced the lady waiting to make a call that I was no gentleman. Win one, lose one.

  15

  I WENT HOME AND FILLED THE BATHTUB. My bathtub is very important to me. I think well there. My tub is an old-fashioned one with claw legs and a drain near the top, right under the faucets. I turn on the hot water, after the tub is filled, to a trickle. I sink down. The water stays the right temperature. I keep a pad and pencil on the ledge next to the tub. I get an idea, it's on paper within seconds. As for the temperature, every time it gets to the heat I like best, I think of the time when I was still a patrolman.

  Some woman was having a baby before the doctor got there. The husband was panicking. I heard the yelling and went upstairs. I had her sit in a chair, and I took the front of it and he took the back of it. We carried her downstairs while I had a kid grab a taxi. On the third landing, while the chair was tipped forward in my direction, the bag of water broke. The amniotic fluid gushed over my hands. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened to me, and I remember being astonished at the liquid's temperature. It was almost hot. It was, as a matter of fact, the exact temperature that I like my bath.

  So maybe taking a hot bath is a symbolic return to the womb. Whatever the reason, I consider my bath important. I like the way I arranged the slow trickle. I wouldn't let the landlord put in a modern bathtub. He was hurt. He said everyone else in the building was appreciative. I said I wouldn't be. He didn't press it too much. That's one advantage of being a detective.

  I got undressed and put one foot into the hot water. The phone ra
ng. I padded out and lifted the receiver.

  "Hello?"

  Nothing.

  It was one of those calls. The people who make them breathe into the phone. They want to get you scared or get you angry. The thing to do is not to get angry while they're listening.

  I heard a faint sound but couldn't place it.

  I kept my voice emotionless. "Good-bye," I said softly and hung up. Irene? Not her style. I would have liked to slam down the receiver, but that would have put the jerk ahead.

  I went back and eased myself into the hot water. The bandage was filthy. I took it off and tossed it into the toilet bowl. My palm looked like a pink first baseman's mitt, with little bits of the sutures sticking out. It looked awful. I sank way down with my tail sliding far forward. I held my bad hand up so that from the wrist up it was above water. I suppose I looked like an alligator waiting for prey. I let out a long groan of content and the phone rang again.

  I let it ring. After the tenth ring I got out and left a dripping trail across my apartment. I listened to the silent breathing and the faint sound began again. It was a swishing, clinking sound. I suddenly realized what it was. Ice cubes in a tall glass. Who did I know who put ice cubes in a tall glass?

  I told her what to do with them.

  "That's what I want!" she said. The Duchess. "I want to have you get mad at me."

  I told her where else she could put them.

  "Don't hang up just yet," she said. "I'll just keep calling you all night." What could I do? Complain to the cops that a Duchess was harrassing me?

  "Why don't I come up and visit you? No? How about buying me a drink?"

  "No."

  "How about me buying you a drink?"

  "Women who drink like you give me a pain in the-"

  "Don't be vulgar again. I hear you're looking for a ladyfinger," she said.

  "It's a lady's finger, yes." I watched the puddle grow at my feet. "How did you hear about it?"

  "I'll be at Schrafft's in fifteen minutes," she said. The phone clicked. Schrafft's was around the corner. I pulled out the plug and dressed. I went into the restaurant and ordered a hamburger with raw onion and a bottle of beer. I was the only man sitting in the dining room. I needed a shave and I kept my hand under the table. Enough was enough in a genteel joint like Schrafft's, and there might be a time when I would want to come in again.