The Con Man (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,35

very rarely turned up any good murder suspects. His time, he assumed, could be better spent in a thorough rundown of the city’s tattoo parlors in an effort to track down the NAC that had appeared on the second floater’s hand.

So he allowed Brown to take his place, and that was most unfortunate.

It was unfortunate in that there were two handsome blond men who were shown at the lineup that Wednesday.

One of them had killed Mary Louise Proschek and the second unidentified floater.

Brown was interested, at the moment, in con men—not murderers.

Carella was interested in tattoo parlors.

Kling was a new cop.

He accompanied Brown to Headquarters on that Wednesday. The city was, again, blanketed with a dreary drizzle, and the men spoke very little on the long ride downtown. Kling, for the most part, was thinking of breaking his vacation date to Claire and wondering how she would react to it. Brown was thinking about his con man, who had acted singly once and in concert a second time, and wondering if the lineup would turn up anything. Brown drove slowly because of the slick pavement. They did not reach Headquarters until 9:05. By the time the elevator had taken them to the ninth floor, the lineup had been underway for some ten minutes. They pinned their shields to their jackets and passed through the patrolman outside at the desk in the corridor. The patrolman said nothing. He simply looked at his watch condemningly.

The large gymnasium-like room was dark when they entered it. The only area of light was at the far end of the room, where the stage was brilliantly illuminated.

“…third stickup in 1949,” the chief of detectives said from his dais behind the rows and rows of folding chairs upon which detectives from every precinct in the city sat. “Thought we’d cured you that time, Alphonse, but apparently, you never learn. Now how about that gas station last night?”

The man on the stage was silent. The microphone hung before his face on a solid steel pipe, and the graduated height markers on the wall behind him told the assembled bulls that he was five foot eight.

Kling and Brown made their way unobtrusively past the dais and speaking stand and then shuffled into one of the rows, sitting as quickly and quietly as they could.

“I’m talking to you, Alphonse,” the chief of detectives said. “Never mind the latecomers,” he added sarcastically, and Kling felt a hot flush spread over his face.

“I hear you fine,” Alphonse said.

“Then how about it?”

“I don’t have to say nothing at a lineup, and you know it.”

“You’ve been to a lot of lineups, huh?”

“A couple.”

“On these other stickups?”

“Yeah.”

“Never thought you’d be here again on a stickup, did you?”

“I got nothing to say,” Alphonse said. “You got to prove there was a stickup and that I done it.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” the chief of detectives said. “It might go a little easier on you if you told us what we wanted to know, though.”

“Snow jobs I can do without so early in the morning,” Alphonse said. “I know the setup. Don’t ask questions, ’cause I know I don’t have to answer them.”

“All right,” the chief of detectives conceded. “Next case.”

Alphonse walked off the stage, his movements followed by every eye in the room. For the purpose of these Monday-to-Thursday, early-morning parades was simply to acquaint every detective in the city with the men who were committing crime in their city. Sometimes, a victim was invited to the lineup in an attempt to identify a suspect, but such occasions were rare and usually fruitless. They were rare because a victim generally had a thousand good reasons for not wanting to be at the lineup. They were usually fruitless because a victim generally had a thousand good reasons for not wanting to identify a suspect. The least valid of these reasons, if the most popularly accepted, was fear of reprisal. In any case, not many suspects were identified by victims. Were this the sole purpose of the lineup, the whole affair would have been a dreadful flop. On the other hand, the bulls who congregated at headquarters every Monday-to-Thursday morning—as much as they disliked the task—studied the felony offenders of the day before with close scrutiny. You never knew when you’d get a lead to the case you were working on. And you never knew when it might be important to recognize a cheap thief on the street. Such recognition might, in rare cases, even save your life.

And