The Empty Hours by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online Page B

while the chief read off
the charges and handled the interrogation. The pattern was a simple one. The
arresting officer, uniformed or plain-clothes, would join the chief at the
rear of the gym when his arrest came up. The chief would read off the felon’s
name, and then the section of the city in which he’d been arrested, and then a
number. He would say, for example, “Jones, John, Riverhead, three.” The “three”
would simply indicate that this was the third arrest in Riverhead that day.
Only felonies and special types of misdemeanors were handled at the line-up, so
this narrowed the list of performers on any given day. Following the case
number, the chief would read off the offense, and then say either “Statement”
or “No statement,” telling the assembled cops that the thief either had or had
not said anything when they’d put the collar on him. If there had been a
statement, the chief would limit his questions to rather general topics since
he didn’t want to lead the felon into saying anything that might contradict his
usually incriminating initial statement, words that could be used against him
in court. If there had been no statement, the chief would pull out all
the stops. He was generally armed with whatever police records were available
on the man who stood under the blinding lights, and it was the smart thief who
understood the purpose of the line-up and who knew he was not bound to answer a
goddamned thing they asked him. The chief of detectives was something like a
deadly earnest Mike Wallace, but the stakes were slightly higher here because
this involved something a little more important than a novelist plugging his
new book or a senator explaining the stand he had taken on a farm bill. These
were truly “interviews in depth,” and the booby prize was very often a long
stretch up the river in a cozy one-windowed room.
     
    The
line-up bored the hell out of Kling. It always did. It was like seeing a stage
show for the hundredth time. Every now and then somebody stopped the show with
a really good routine. But usually it was the same old song and dance. It wasn’t
any different that Wednesday. By the time the eighth offender had been paraded
and subjected to the chief’s bludgeoning interrogation, Kling was beginning
to doze. The detective sitting next to him nudged him gently in the ribs.
     
    “...
Reynolds, Ralph,” the chief was saying, “Isola, four. Caught burgling an
apartment on North Third. No statement. How about it, Ralph?”
     
    “How
about what?”
     
    “You do
this sort of thing often?”
     
    “What
sort of thing?”
     
    “Burglary.”
     
    “I’m no
burglar,” Reynolds said.
     
    “I’ve
got his B-sheet here,” the chief said. “Arrested for burglary in 1948, witness
withdrew her testimony, claimed she had mistakenly identified him. Arrested
again for burglary in 1952, convicted for Burglary One, sentenced to ten at
Castleview, paroled in ‘58 on good behavior. You’re back at the old stand,
huh, Ralph?”
     
    “No,
not me. I’ve been straight ever since I got out.”
     
    “Then
what were you doing in that apartment during the middle of the night?”
     
    “I was
a little drunk. I must have walked into the wrong building.”
     
    “What
do you mean?”
     
    “I
thought it was my apartment.”
     
    “Where
do you live, Ralph?”
     
    “On . .
.uh . . .well.”
     
    “Come
on, Ralph.”
     
    “Well,
I live on South Fifth.”
     
    “And
the apartment you were in last night is on North Third. You must have been
pretty drunk to wander that far off course.”
     
    “Yeah,
I guess I was pretty drunk.”
     
    “Woman
in that apartment said you hit her when she woke up. Is that true, Ralph?”
     
    “No.
No, hey, I never hit her.”
     
    “She
says so, Ralph.”
     
    “Well,
she’s mistaken.”
     
    “Well,
now, a doctor’s report says somebody clipped her on the jaw, Ralph, now how
about that?”
     
    “Well,
maybe.”
     
    “Yes