The Con Man (87th Precinct) by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781612181844
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2013-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Arthur Brown was so zealous in his pursuit of the con man. Had he not been such an eager beaver, he would not have asked to replace Carella when Carella drew Lineup that week. Lineup means a trip downtown to Headquarters on High Street, and Lineup means sitting in a room with a pile of other detectives from all over the city, watching the parade of felony offenders. Lineup is sometimes exciting; usually, it’s a bore.

Brown, as it happened, had just held his personal lineup in the squadroom of the 87th Precinct, whereat he paraded Frederick “Fritzie” Deutsch before a little Negro girl named Betty Prescott and a big businessman named Elliot Jamison. Both victims had cleared Deutsch at once. He was not the man (or in Jamison’s case, either of the men) who had conned them. Brown was secretly pleased. He had thanked both Miss Prescott and Mr. Jamison and then clapped Deutsch on the back and gruffly said, “Keep your nose clean.”

And then he had asked Carella if he could take his place at the lineup the next day. Carella, who considered the lineup a necessary evil—something like a mother-in-law who comes to live with you—readily relinquished the duty. Had Carella been the sort of cop who loved Lineup, had Carella been more conscientious, more devoted to detail, had Carella felt any real purpose would be served by his appearance at Headquarters that Wednesday, things might have worked out differently.

Actually, Carella was conscientious, and he was devoted to detail—but he was up to his ears in floaters and the lineup 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.

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