Night of the Juggler

Chapter 9

In his headquarters at the 19th Precinct, Gypsy Tonnelli gave rapid orders to Sokolsky at the switchboard. “Send a signal to the Fourth Division, the Twentieth, the Twenty-third and the Twenty-fifth precincts.”

Units from the 19th were already in the street, and the forces he was presently committing would box Eighty-third and Lexington on the cardinal points of the compass. While Detectives Clem Scott and Carmine Garbalotto waited for orders (Augie Brohan and Jim Taylor had already gone), Tonnelli mentally checked and rechecked the distributions of his units. Here, the 19th, was the southern flank, the Fourth Division and the 20th Precinct held the western line, while the 23rd and 25th comprised the northern and eastern boundaries.

“Carmine, you and Clem take as many uniformed cops as you need and start rousting the supers. Alert them and their engineering staffs to check the basements of their buildings for signs of forced entry.”

When the detectives had gone, Tonnelli paced the floor, reexamining every decision he had made, trying to be sure he had forgotten nothing. Then he stopped, suddenly becoming aware of a stockily built, neatly groomed white-haired old man standing in the door of his office.

“Yes?” Tonnelli said to him, puzzled by some quality of tension and expectancy in the man’s expression.

“I’m Babe Fritzel,’ the white-haired old man said. Sokolsky looked wearily at the ceiling. “I was here before, talked to your guy on the switchboard. He didn’t seem to understand that I came all the way over from Teaneck, New Jersey, to lend you guys a hand. I was a cop for twenty-eight years in Camden. You may not remember, but I was the guy that finally put the cuffs on Howard Unruh after he’d killed thirteen people. Lot of them kids. One lady he killed in a car waiting for the light to change. He had a firing range in his basement, the wall three feet thick with sandbags.”

Tonnelli stared at him and shook his head slowly. “We took him to Cooper Hospital in Camden,” Fritzel continued, apparently oblivious of Tonnelli’s negative reaction. “They treated him for a minor bullet wound, and then we took him to the New Jersey Hospital for the Insane in Trenton. I still got a gun and a permit to carry it, and a two-way radio. And the way I look at it-”

Tonnelli cut him off with an irritable, chopping gesture of his right hand. “What you got over there in Teaneck, Mr. Fritzel? Chickens or a truck farm?”

“Neither, but I keep busy. Some gunning in the fall, and weekends I help the bartender at the Elks’ Club.”

And, Tonnelli thought, you miss those flashing red dome lights, the smell of cordite after a shoot-out, the good old days.

“Look, you were a cop and obviously a fine one,” Tonnelli said to Fritzel.

“So you know what I got to say. Which is wish us luck and go on home.”

“I figured you’d say that.” Fritzel glanced wistfully around the office, watching with a sadly detached interest as a policewoman, Doris Polk, hurried from her inner office with a memo for Sokolsky.

“Good luck, Lieutenant,” Fritzel said, and with a little salute which indicated Tonnelli, the office, and his own past, he turned and walked slowly toward the elevators.

Sergeant Rusty Boyle found a parking space in front of Joyce Colby’s apartment building, which was in the East Sixties between Park and Madison.

He cut the motor but made no move to leave the car. He sat thinking about what he had decided to do. He didn’t know whether it was right or wrong, but he was determined to do it. Sergeant Boyle sighed and rubbed a hand through his thick red hair. On balance, he was a reasonably uncomplicated human being, but there were times when he didn’t understand a certain compulsive need to render sympathy and compassion to the helpless, shit-upon losers he met as a cop in the crowded and often merciless streets of New York.

Boyle picked up his dashboard phone and asked Central to patch him through to a number he had looked up earlier at the 13th Precinct.

To a certain extent, Tonnelli was undoubtedly right. Ransom should at least be advised of his options. Whether or not he chose to exercise them was another matter. But somebody had to tell him-No, that was too strong. Somebody should just give him a hint there was another way to go, that he just didn’t have to wait until the fire inside him burned up his life.

The connection was made. The phone rang three times. Then he recognized Ransom’s voice.

“Hello?”

“John Ransom?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“John, this is Sergeant Boyle. Rusty Boyle. Remember we had a talk yesterday?”

“Of course.” Ransom’s voice was suddenly warm; Rusty Boyle could imagine that he was smiling.

“Well, here’s why I’m calling. I got to thinking. This is something you might check out. I mean, what hit you is just as much an accident as if it was a truck. Maybe you could ask your doctor about it.”

“I appreciate your interest, but I don’t see what good it would do.”

“Maybe not. It was just a thought. It might have some effect on your pension-”

Ransom laughed weakly. “If I had one, Sergeant.”

Please take the hook, Rusty Boyle thought. Please. Don’t make me a goddamn accessory before and after the fact.

“But I can’t say how much it helps to have you call me like this, Sergeant. I’ve never talked about it with anyone except the doctors. That’s the hardest part of it.” Ransom’s voice was trembling emotionally.

“Carrying it around with you and not being able to talk about it.”

All right, Boyle thought, you’re in this far, so use a sledgehammer.

“I thought ‘accident’ because that might apply if you’ve got a double indemnity clause in your insurance policy. . ”

Ransom was silent for a dozen or more seconds, but Boyle could hear the altered rate of his breathing; it was ragged and uneven, and unless Boyle was imagining things, it was threaded with a touch of apprehension. At last, Ransom said, “I believe I understand what you mean, Sergeant.”

“It’s just something you might check out. . ”

“I intend to, Sergeant. Thank you”-Ransom’s voice was close to breaking-”and God bless you.”

As Rusty Boyle let himself into Joyce’s apartment, he was remembering the first time he had met her, five months ago when she had called the precinct to report a burglary. A ring with a sentimental value but very little else was missing. He had filed a report and forgotten about it. But he couldn’t forget Joyce Colby. She was slim and tall, in her late twenties, with a fair complexion that was in flawless complement to her fire-engine red hair. And she was honest and intelligent, and Rusty Boyle loved her so much that she could melt his heart with a laugh or a gesture.

She had been married at eighteen to a construction worker, who had been killed in a fall from the forty-second floor of a building being put up near Times Square. From that experience and from Rusty Boyle’s own occupational hazards, Joyce believed that brave men were always in danger, simply by virtue of their maleness and courage, and she considered it not only her privilege but her duty to reward such men with understanding intelligence and share with them the sexual excitements of her body.

When he closed the door, she called a hello to him from the kitchen.

She was wearing green velvet Levi’s and a white silk shirt buttoned only at the waist, and when he kissed her and took her in his arms, the lovely swell of her breasts charged his whole body with excitement.

When she turned away from him, however, he noted a touch of resignation in her manner.

“Anything wrong?”

She smiled and shook her head slowly.

He picked up a bottle of scotch and two glasses from the bar adjoining the sink, but she shook her head again and put a hand on his arm.

“There’s a steak, an avocado salad, and a bottle of good cold wine,”

she said. “But later.”

“Goddamn it to hell,” he said.

“That’s right. Tonnelli called.”

“Goddamn it,” he said again, but he was already on his way to the front door.