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liable to be upset,” Kling said. “Mama doesn’t mind a good joke, but not on the city’s time.”
    “All work and no play…” Bartholdi started and then cut himself short when he saw that Kling actually was leaving. “All right, sorehead,” he said, “come look at the files. Come drown in the files. We’ve got enough missing persons here to keep you going for a year.”
    “Thanks a lot,” Kling said, and he followed the detectives down the corridor.
    “We try to keep them cross-indexed,” Ambrose said. “This ain’t the IB, but we do our level best. We got ’em alphabetically, and we got ’em chronologically—according to when they were reported missing—and we got ’em broken down male and female.”
    “The boys with the boys, and the girls with the girls,” Bartholdi said.
    “There’s everything you need in each of the separate folders. Medical reports where we could get ’em, dental charts, even letters and documents in some of the folders.”
    “Don’t mix the folders up,” Bartholdi said. “That would mean getting a beautiful blonde police stenographer in to straighten them out again.”
    “And we don’t cotton to beautiful blondes around here,” Ambrose said.
    “We kick ’em out in the street whenever they come knocking.”
    “That’s because we’re both respectable married men.”
    “Who resist all temptations,” Bartholdi concluded. “Here are the files.” He made a grandiloquent sweeping gesture with one arm, indicating the banks and banks of green filing cabinets that lined the walls of the room. “This is April, and you want to go back six months. That’d put you in November.” He made a vague gesture with one hand. “That’s over there someplace.” He winked at Ambrose. “Now, are we cooperating, or are we?”
    “You’re the most cooperative,” Kling said.
    “Hope you find what you need,” Ambrose said, opening the door. “Come on, Romeo.”
    Bartholdi followed him out. Kling sighed, looked at the filing cabinets, and then lighted a cigarette. There was a sign on one of the walls, and the sign read: SHUFFLE THEM, JIGGLE THEM, MAUL THEM, CARESS THEM—BUT LEAVE THEM THE WAY YOU FOUND THEM!
    He walked around the room until he came to the cabinet containing the file of persons who were reported missing in November of the preceding year. He opened the top drawer of the cabinet, pulled up a straight-back wooden chair upon which to prop his foot, and doggedly began leafing through the folders.
    The work was not exactly unpleasant, but it was far from exciting. The average misconception of the city detective, of course, is one of a tough, big man wearing a shoulder holster facing a desperate criminal and shooting it out in the streets. Kling was big, not so tough, and he carried his service revolver in a leather holster clipped into his right back pocket. He was not shooting it out with anyone at the moment, desperate or not. The only desperation he knew was of a quiet sort, which drives many city detectives into the nearest loony bin, where they silently pick atthe coverlets. Kling, at the moment, was involved in routine—and routine is the most routine thing in the world.
    Routine is what makes you wash your face and shave and brush your teeth in the morning.
    Routine is the business of inserting a key into the ignition switch, twisting the key, starting the car, and putting it into drive before you can go anyplace.
    Routine is answering a letter with a polite thank-you and then answering the resultant thank-you letter with another letter stating, “You’re welcome.”
    Routine is the list of questions you ask the surviving wife of an automobile accident victim.
    Routine is the tag you fill out and attach to a piece of evidence.
    Routine is the report you type back at the squadroom.
    Routine is a deadly dull bore, and it isn’t even crashing, and detectives know routine in triplicate, and the detective who isn’t patient with a typewriter—no matter what