The Con Man (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,1

Kling was a detective/3rd grade. He was tall and blond and somewhat young looking, mainly because he was young. He was the newest detective on the squad, and sometimes, his questions weren’t exactly to the point because he was still learning the art of questioning. Sometimes, too, his questions made him feel a little foolish. So Bert Kling knew just how the young Negro girl in the straight-back chair felt.

“My name is Betty,” she said. “Betty Prescott.”

“Where do you live, Betty?” Kling asked.

“Well, I work for some people in the next state. I’m a domestic, you know? I been working for them for six months now. Mr. and Mrs. Haines?” She made the last a question, and she raised her eyebrows as if expecting Kling to know who Mr. and Mrs. Haines were. Kling did not know. “I’m supposed to be back there now,” Betty said. “Thursday’s my day off, you see. Thursdays and every other Sunday. I generally come into the city every Thursday. Mr. Haines drives me to the station, and then Mrs. Haines picks me up when I come back. I’m supposed to be back now, but I felt I should report this. I called Mrs. Haines, and she said, by all means, I should report it. You see?”

“I see,” Kling said. “Do you keep an apartment in the city?”

“I live with my cousin here. Isabel Johnson?” Again she made the name a question. Kling didn’t know Isabel Johnson, either.

“All right, what happened, Betty?” Brown asked. He had been silent up to this point, giving Kling his head. But Arthur Brown was a detective/2nd grade and a known tendency toward impatience. He was impatient, perhaps, because his name was Brown and the accidentals of birth had tinted his complexion the same color. He had taken a lot of ribbing from fellow Americans over the years and had once considered changing his name to Lipschitz so that the hate mongers could really have a ball. His impatience, as it related to his chosen profession, was sometimes a hindrance, but it crossed a very subtle line into a second character trait, and that trait was doggedness. Once Brown got his teeth into a case, he wouldn’t unclamp his jaws until the nut was cracked. His impatience was a peculiar thing. There was, for example, a detective named Meyer Meyer at the precinct. Meyer’s surname was, of course, Meyer, and Meyer’s father had stuck him with the given name of Meyer so that his offspring emerged as Meyer Meyer. Now, if ever a man took guff because of a handle some unthinking parent had given him, Meyer Meyer was that man. But, in Meyer, the years of guff had led to an almost supernatural attitude of patience. The only crack in Meyer’s veneer of extreme patience emerged in a physical way. For Meyer Meyer was as bald as a cue ball, even though he was a young man. But that’s the way it goes. Two men, two names, two extremes.

Impatiently, Brown asked, “What happened?”

“I got off the train yesterday morning,” Betty said. “I take the eight-seventeen in with Mr. Haines. I don’t sit with him because he’s always talking business with his friends. He’s in public relations?” Again, the question mark.

Kling nodded.

“Go on,” Brown said impatiently.

“Well, when we got here to the city, I got off the train, and I was walking along when this man came up to me.”

“Where was this?” Brown asked.

“Right in the station,” Betty said.

“Go ahead.”

“He said hello, and he asked me was I new in the city? I said, no, I’d been up North for two years, but I was working out the state. He seemed like a very nice fellow, dressed nice, you know? Respectable?”

“Yes,” Kling said.

“Anyway, he said he was a preacher. He looked like a preacher, too. He started blessing me then. He said God bless you and all like that, and he said I should be very careful in the big city because there was all kinds of pitfalls for a young, innocent girl. People who’d want to do me harm?”

Again, the question mark, and again, Kling said, “Yes,” and immediately afterwards cursed himself for falling into the pitfall of the girl’s speech pattern.

“He said I should be especially careful with money, because there was all sorts of people who’d do most anything to get their hands on it. He asked me if I had any money with me.”

“Was he white or Negro?” Brown asked.

Betty looked at Kling somewhat apologetically. “He