The Con Man (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,23

in the mouth, Havilland?”

“Oh, Jesus!” Havilland roared. “The kid breaks me up! There’s nothing dishonest about screwing, kid, unless you cross a state line!”

“Lay off, Rog,” Meyer said.

“What’s the matter?” Havilland asked. “I envy the kid. Vacation in June, and a sweet little shack-up waiting for—”

“Lay off!” Meyer said, more loudly this time. He had seen the spark of sudden anger in Kling’s eyes, and he had seen the involuntary clenching of Kling’s right fist. Havilland outweighed and outreached Kling, and Havilland was not famous for the purity of his fighting tactics. Meyer did not want blood on the squadroom floor—not Kling’s blood, anyway.

“Nobody’s got any sense of humor in this dump,” Havilland said surlily. “You got to have a sense of humor here, or you don’t survive.”

“Go help Brown with his con man troubles,” Meyer said.

“Brown ain’t got no humor, either,” Havilland said, and he stalked off.

“That big turd,” Kling said. “Someday…”

“Well,” Meyer said, his eyes twinkling, “in a sense, he’s right. The Mann Act is a serious thing. Very serious.”

Kling looked at him. Meyer had used almost the same words as Havilland, but somehow, there was a difference. “A very serious thing,” he answered. “I’ll be careful, Meyer.”

“Caution is the watchword,” Meyer said, grinning.

“The truth is,” Kling said, “this damn June tenth spot might screw things up. Claire goes to college, you know. She may be in the middle of finals or something right then.”

“You been planning on this for some time?” Meyer asked.

“Yeah,” Kling said, thinking of the June 10 spot, and hoping it would jibe with Claire’s schedule, and wondering what he could do about it if it didn’t.

Meyer nodded sympathetically. “Is it a special occasion?” he asked. “Your going away together, I mean?”

Kling, immersed in his thoughts, answered automatically, forgetting he was talking to a fellow cop. “Yes,” he said. “We’re in love.”

“The trouble with you,” Havilland said to Brown, “is you’re in love with your work.”

“I spend almost all my waking hours in this room,” Brown said. “It’d be a sad goddamn thing if I didn’t like what I was doing.”

“It wouldn’t be sad at all,” Havilland said. “I hate being a cop.”

“Then why don’t you quit the force?” Brown asked flatly.

“They need me too much,” Havilland said.

“Sure.”

“They do. This squad would go to pieces in a week if I wasn’t around to hold its hand.”

“Hold this a while,” Brown said.

“Crime would flourish,” Havilland continued, unfazed. “The city would be overrun by cheap thieves.”

“Roger Havilland, Protector of the People,” Brown said.

“That’s me,” Havilland confessed.

“Here, Protector,” Brown said, “take a look at this.”

“What?”

“This RKC card. How does it look to you?”

“What am I supposed to be looking for?” Havilland asked.

“A con man,” Brown said. He handed the card to Havilland.

With the casual scrutiny born of years of detective work, Havilland studied the face of the card:

“Tells me nothing,” Havilland said.

“Flip it over,” Brown told him.

Havilland turned over the card and began reading again.

“Could be,” Havilland said.

“Thing that interests me about him is that he’s a jack of all trades,” Brown said. “You get a con man, he usually sticks to one game if it’s working for him. This guy varies his game. Like the louse we got roaming the 87th. He must be pretty smooth, too, because he’s barely a kid and he only took one fall.” Brown looked at the card. “Who the hell made out this thing? It’s supposed to tell you where he was sentenced and what for.”

“What difference does it make?” Havilland asked airily.

“I like to know what I’m dealing with,” Brown said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m heading for the Hotel Carter right now to pick him up.”

The Hotel Carter was, in many respects, a very sleazy dump.

On the other hand, to those of its inhabitants who had recently arrived from skid row, it had all the glamour and impressiveness of the Waldorf Astoria. It all depended how you looked at it.

If you stood on the sidewalk at the corner of Culver Avenue and South Eleventh Street, and it happened to be raining, and you happened to be a cop out to make a pinch, the Hotel Carter looked like a very sleazy dump.

Brown sighed, pulled up the collar of his trench coat, remarked to himself silently that he looked something like a private eye, and then walked into the hotel lobby. An old man sat in a soiled easy chair looking out at the rain, remembering kisses from Marjorie Morningstar under the lilacs. The lobby smelled. Brown suspected the old man contributed to