by Ed McBain
“Are we going to make love tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Do you feel like it?”
“Do you?”
“I think I could be persuaded.”
“What I’m asking…”
“I know.”
“Should I put the diaphragm in?” Her voice lowered. “Is what I’m asking.”
“Well, if you’re going to look so sexy and beautiful and all in that transparent slip with the light behind you, I think you ought to put in your diaphragm and take the pill and do everything possible to protect yourself because I’m but a mere mortal who can’t possibly resist you, is what I think.”
“Sweet talker,” she said, and smiled, and went back into the bathroom, and closed the door.
In a little while, she came to him.
THE THING ABOUT being with him was the shared intimacy. Before him, she had never been intimate with another man. She didn’t mean sexually intimate, she’d had sex with a dozen men, at least, before she met Kling. Having sex with a man wasn’t the kind of intimacy she meant. You could be sexually intimate with any man, she supposed, white or black, although Kling was the first white man she’d ever been to bed with. She never expected to go to bed with any other white man in her life. Any other black man, either. Being sexually intimate with some man wasn’t the point of it all. She had finally discovered the point of it all with Bert Kling, the least likely candidate for the job.
To begin with, she outranked him in spades, no pun intended, and political correctness be damned. That was one of the things she meant about being intimate with him. She could happen to say, “Besides, I outrank you in spades,” and he could put on a big Sammy Davis, Jr. watermelon accent and answer, “You can say that again, honey chile,” and she could laugh at the racial allusion and not get angry, the way a black woman in America—especially a black woman who wanted to become a doctor—could sometimes get very damned angry in America. And besides, she did outrank him in spades, which meant that she was a Deputy Chief who earned sixty-eight grand a year, and he was but a Detective/Third Grade who earned a whole hell of a lot less than that, a fact she had to remind him of every time he insisted on picking up a restaurant check, God, how she loved this man.
That had been one of the early problems, their relative positions in this small paramilitary force known as the Police Department, wherein fraternization between a chief and the lowest grade of detective was—if not forbidden by fiat—at least discreetly frowned upon. Not to mention this other small matter of their disparate coloration, or lack of coloration as the case actually was, black and white being an absence of hue rather than a plain statement like red or green for stop or go. That was what they’d had to decide rather early on. Stop or go.
Oddly, her rank was what had troubled him most.
She could remember him calling for the first time from one of those open plastic phone shells, standing in the rain and asking her if she’d care to have dinner with him. He thought it might make a difference that he was just a detective/third and she was a one-star chief. No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.
“Does it?” he’d asked.
“Does what?”
“Does it make a difference? Your rank?”
“No,” she’d said.
But what about the other? she’d wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?
“Rainy day like today,” he’d said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”
With a white man, she’d thought.
Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees. You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to take me out to dinner and a movie.
Bring the subject up, she’d thought. Face it head on. Ask him if he realizes I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him…
“Well…uh…do you think you might like to?” he’d asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”
“Why do you want to do this?” she’d asked.
“Well,” he’d said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company.”
She supposed the intimacy between them had started right that minute.
It was an intimacy that had nothing to do with protecting or defending their right to be together in these racially divided United States of America, nothing to do with this white man and black woman having unimaginably found each other long before the slogan “United We Stand” came into vogue again. Nor did their intimacy have anything to do with his whiteness or her blackness although each found this disparity enormously attractive. They both realized that terrorism wouldn’t last forever, all wars ended sooner or later, and there would still be an America where blacks and whites could never be intimate unless they first forgot they were black or white.
Sharyn Everard Cooke and Bertram Alexander Kling had forgotten that a long time ago. In the dark there were only two people making love. But this was sexual intimacy, and they had both enjoyed that before, albeit never with anyone who wasn’t color-coordinated. Now that they were equal opportunity employers, so to speak, they had to admit that sex with someone of a different tint was actually something of a kick.
“How about all this stuff I hear about black men?” Kling once asked.
“Why?” she said. “Are you feeling underprivileged?”
“I’m just curious.”
“You know the joke, don’t you?”
“Which one is that?”
“Man loses his penis in an automobile accident, he goes to see a surgeon who says he can give him a penis implant?”
“Yeah?”
“Guy says, ‘That’s great, but how will I know what I’m getting?’ The surgeon says, ‘I’ll show you some samples.’ He goes in the back room, comes back with a penis six inches long, shows it to the guy. The guy says, ‘Well, since I’ll be getting a new one, I was hoping…’ The surgeon holds up his hands, says, ‘I understand completely,’ goes in the back room, comes back with a penis eight inches long. The guy says, ‘Well, to be perfectly frank, I was hoping for something with a bit more authority.’ The surgeon goes off again, comes back with a penis twelve inches long. The guy says, ‘Now you’re talking! Does it come in white?’”
Kling burst out laughing.
“Do that answer yo question, honey chile?” Sharyn asked.
The intimacy went beyond white and black.
The intimacy was based on the knowledge that living together with anyone was something that required constant care and attention. Intimacy demanded utter honesty and complete trust. Intimacy meant never being afraid of revealing yourself to another person, exposing yourself to this person, warts and all, without fear of condemnation or derision.
Kling, who was not Jewish, described intimacy as a “shlep,” a Yiddish word that actually meant “to carry, or pull, or drag, or lag behind,” but which he took to mean “a long haul,” as in the expression “Man, that was a shlep and a half!” common to everyone in this city regardless of stripe or persuasion, United We Stand, and God Bless America! They were both in this for the long haul. And though they knew true intimacy wasn’t easy, they realized that once you got the knack of it, everything else seemed so very simple.
Sharyn found a yarn shop near Rankin Plaza that would needle-point a small pillow to her specifications. Actually, she had two of the pillows made, one for his apartment, the other for hers, one in white letters on black, the other in black letters on white. Each pillow read:
Share
Help
Love
Encourage
Protect
Kling was bone-weary when he got to her apartment that night. He had taken the subway out to Calm’s Point, and didn’t get there till almost nine-thirty. He’d grabbed a hamburger at the squadroom, but he was grateful nonetheless for the
soup and sandwich she had waiting for him. He didn’t see the pillow until after he’d eaten. In fact, he was lying on the sofa in her living room, watching the Eleven O’Clock News, his head resting right on the pillow, when Sharyn suggested that he might be more comfortable with a softer pillow, and he said, “No, I’m fine, hon,” and she said, “Here, let me help you,” and she took the pillow from under his head and replaced it with a down pillow from the bedroom, and then she put the smaller pillow on his chest, and he still didn’t look at it, what was wrong with this man? Patience, she told herself, you did get through med school, you know.
So she waited until the news went off, and they were both ready for bed, and then she came into the bedroom stark naked, holding the pillow with both hands at the joining of her legs, covering the wild tangle of her pubic patch, and he squinted at her, and said, “A definite improvement,” and she burst out laughing and threw the pillow at him.
He read the needlepoint:
Share
Help
Love
Encourage
Protect
“That says it all,” he told her, and took her into his arms.
Now, with her in his arms again, spent and somewhat damp from their exertion, the lights of the bridge twinkling in the distance, he told her that Eileen Burke had been transferred to the Eight-Seven and would be working there from now on, and Sharyn asked, “Does that bother you?” and he said, “I don’t know.”
And that was honest.
And that was what the two of them were all about.
7
IT WAS WHILE OLLIE was investigating what in his mind would always be known as “The $$$ Case,” that he’d received from a knowledgeable editor at the publishing firm of Wadsworth and Dodds, which later turned out to be a front for a big drug-running operation and God knew what else—but that was another story. Anyway, a woman up there named Karen Andersen had given him a form letter from an editor up there named Henry Daggert, and it was from this letter that Ollie had learned everything he knew about writing bestselling thriller fiction. The letter read:
Dear Aspiring Writer:
I often receive inquiries from writers who wonder about the most effective way to get a suspense novel on the bestseller list. After years of experience, I have discovered that there are some hard and fast rules to be followed in the writing of successful suspense fiction. I would like to share these rules with you now, if I may.
IF YOU WANT TO CRACK THE BESTSELLER LIST
1) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PUTS AN ORDINARY PERSON IN AN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION. Your protagonist must be an “Everyman.” However, you must have at least one complex female character as well. Don’t forget, you want to capture both male and female readers.
2) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PLAYS OUT A UNIVERSAL FANTASY. You must put the reader in a situation that tests him in ways he’s always wanted to be tested, vicariously.
3) YOU MUST COME UP WITH A PLOT THAT PASSES THE “COOL” TEST. You must find an idea that makes readers want to read the book simply on the basis of the idea alone!
4) YOUR PLOT MUST INVOLVE HIGH STAKES. You must make clear that the fate of the world hangs in the balance—or, at least, the fate of a character we desperately care about.
5) YOU MUST INTRODUCE A TICKING CLOCK. You must give your protagonist only a limited amount of time to solve his problem, and the reader should be regularly reminded of the urgency via “COUNTDOWN CUES.”
Ollie deciphered all this to mean that a bestselling suspense novel had to tell a simple story about an ordinary person who found himself in an extraordinary situation that tested him in ways he’d always wanted to be tested, vicariously. Moreover, the plot had to include at least one complex male or female character in it, and the fate of the world had to be hanging in clock-ticking suspense.
But there was yet more to learn.
6) BE SURE TO AVOID AMBIGUITY! You must avoid situations where points in favor of both sides diminish the reader’s ability to root intensely for one side over another. For example: Novels about the IRA. Novels about murky Central American conflicts. Novels about Pro Choice versus Right-to-Life disputes.
7) AVOID WRITING ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE NEWS! Editors (and especially this editor) will be seeing a slew of books on whatever it is, believe me! Be especially wary of plots about Computer Hackers, Genetic Engineering, Air Disasters, Terrorist Attacks, etc.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Henry Daggert
Before Ollie went to bed that night, he reread the last chapter of his novel yet another time. It seemed to him that it was perfect. He had completely mastered all the rules of bestselling suspense fiction, which was why he’d been able to bend them a little. Hence the multiple twists, turns, and edge-of-the-seat suspense in Report to the Commissioner.
Small wonder some cheap thief had stolen the book.
I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds and I just got a run in my pantyhose.
I am writing this in the hope that it will somehow reach you before they kill me.
You will recall having met me once, Mr. Commissioner, when I received a Police Department bravery citation for having foiled, as they say, an imminent robbery at the Stillwater Trust on King Street in Rubytown, as that section of the city is called. They were giving away free toasters when the Attempted Rob occurred. I spilled a glass of red wine, do you remember? Not during the holdup attempt. I mean at the reception following the award. On your white linen suit.
I am a female police detective, twenty-nine years old, five feet, eight inches tall, and weighing one hundred and twenty-three pounds, which is slender. My hair is a sort of reddish brown, what my mother used to call auburn. I wear it cut to just above the shoulders, what my mother used to call a shag cut. My eyes are green. I look very Irish, although Watts is a British name, I think, although Olivia is Latin, which I’m not. My friends call me Livvie. I am a single woman, Mr. Commissioner; I notice from the newspapers that you are recently divorced, by the way; my condolences. My weapon is a Glock nine I carry in a tote bag, but this was taken from me along with all my identification when I was locked in here. A black woman brings me my meals. She is armed with an Uzi.
I have not been killed yet because they are waiting for orders from someone higher up. I can’t imagine why anyone would want me dead. Then again, nothing is ever simple in police work, is it, Mr. Commissioner? I guess you know that better than me. Or perhaps even better than I. I don’t even know where I am. Otherwise I would give you the address and make things really simple. But I was driven here blindfolded from the underwear factory. Which makes it somewhat complicated. So I guess I’d better take it from the top, and tell you everything that happened, and get this report out of here somehow. Then maybe for the love of God you can piece it all together and get to me in time.
Let’s start with Margie Gannon and me, or perhaps Margie and I, having an after-hours beer last Monday night in a bar called O’Malley’s a few blocks from the station house. Margie is sometimes partnered with me, although I’m known in the squadroom as “Livvie the Lone Wolverine,” which of course is the female tense of “The Lone Wolf.” Margie has blond hair she also wears short, and blue eyes, and we make a good team together, partnered or otherwise. We were sipping beer when these two detectives from the Oh-One waltzed over to join us, nice guys we worked with once on a joint narcotics bust sometime back. (I was surprised, to tell the truth, that the little police action back then hadn’t netted at least somebody a citation, but I know you have a lot of other things on your mind.)
Anyway, Frankie Randuzzi, who is with the Oh-One, and was on that Colombian bust I was telling you about, is getting married in June, and he was showing us this rather modest diamond engagement ring, I must say, but you know how much detectives are paid in this city, don’t you, even First Grades like Frankie and me. The guy with him, Jerry Aiello, another paisan, couldn’t help remarking that he’d seen bigger chips than tha
t left by cows in a pasture, to which Frankie replied it was a legit diamond and not one of these diamonds had cost some kid in Africa the loss of an arm or a leg. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, excuse the French, Commish.
Margie, it so happens, knows quite a bit about diamonds. She has been married and divorced twice and has therefore sported engagement rings of various sizes on the third finger of her left hand, more’s the pity I have not. In fact, she is fond of telling the boys around the squadroom that she gets divorced every six years and shot every three, which happens to be true. I was with her once when she took one in the left shoulder. She never wears off-the-shoulder gowns to police functions anymore, but she is very well constructed otherwise, witness the way Jerry Aiello was trying to peer down the front of her blouse.
Margie explained that there’d been a war going on forever in the Sierra Leone and in Angola, over there in Africa someplace, wherever, I always thought Angola was a max security prison in Louisiana. She said that so-called conflict diamonds were what funded the rebel groups fighting over there.
“They call themselves the RUF, which stands for the Revolutionary United Front. They’re eleven-year-old kids armed with AK-47s and machetes,” she said. “They chop off people’s arms and legs, that’s how they maintain control. But you’re wrong if you think these rocks are cheaper than a legit diamond, Frank. In fact, once this rough ice is traded and polished, it’s impossible to know where it came from. That may be one of them you’re showing us right this minute.”
I never knew Margie was so smart.
Before then, I thought she was just a good-looking babe who got shot and divorced all the time.
It just goes to show.
