Cop Hater

COP HATER

by Ed McBain

Copyright © 1956 by Ed McBain

A Signet Book

New American Library

First Printing, October 1973

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 10-18-02 [v1.0]

The city in these pages is imaginary.

The people, the places are all fictitious.

Only the police routing is based on established investigatory technique.

This is for

Dodie and Ray

Chapter ONE

from the river bounding the city on the North, you saw only the magnificent skyline. You stared up at it in something like awe, and sometimes you caught your breath because the view was one of majestic splendor. The clear silhouettes of the buildings slashed at the sky, devouring the blue; flat planes and long planes, rough rectangles and needle sharp spires, minarets and peaks, pattern upon pattern laid in geometric unity against the wash of blue and white which was the sky.

And at night, coming down the River Highway, you were caught in a dazzling galaxy of brilliant suns, a web of lights strung out from the river and then South to capture the city in a brilliant display of electrical wizardry. The highway lights glistened close and glistened farther as they skirted the city and reflected in the dark waters of the river. The windows of the buildings climbed in brilliant rectangular luminosity, climbed to the stars and joined the wash of red and green and yellow and orange neon which tinted the sky. The traffic lights blinked their gaudy eyes and along the Stern, the incandescent display tangled in a riot of color and eye-aching splash.

The city lay like a sparkling nest of rare gems, shimmering in layer upon layer of pulsating intensity.

The buildings were a stage set.

They faced the river, and they glowed with man-made brilliance, and you stared up at them in awe, and you caught your breath.

Behind the buildings, behind the lights, were the streets.

There was garbage in the streets.

The alarm sounded at eleven p.m.

He reached out for it, groping in the darkness, finding the lever and pressing it against the back of the clock. The buzzing stopped. The room was very silent. Beside him, he could hear May's even breathing. The windows were wide open, but the room was hot and damp, and he thought again about the air conditioning unit he'd wanted to buy since the Summer began. Reluctantly, he sat up and rubbed hamlike fists into his eyes.

He was a big man, his head topped with straight blond hair that was unruly now. His eyes were normally grey, but they were virtually colorless in the darkness of the room, puffed with sleep. He stood up and stretched. He slept only in pajama pants, and when he raised his arms over his head, the pants slipped down over the flatness of his hard belly. He let out a grunt, pulled up the pants, and then glanced at May again.

The sheet was wadded at the foot of the bed, a soggy lifeless mass. May lay curled into a sprawling C, her gown twisted up over her thigh. He went to the bed and put his hand on her thigh for an instant. She murmured and rolled over. He grinned in the darkness and then went into the bathroom to shave.

He had timed every step of the operation, and so he knew just how long it took to shave, just how long it took to dress, just how long it took to gulp a quick cup of coffee. He took oft his wrist watch before he began shaving, leaving it on the washbasin where he could glance at it occasionally. At eleven-ten, he began dressing. He put on an Aloha shirt his brother had sent him from Hawaii. He put on a pair of tan gabardine slacks, and a light poplin windbreaker. He put a handkerchief in his left hip pocket, and then scooped his wallet and change off the dresser.

He opened the top drawer of the dresser and took the .38 from where it lay next to May's jewelry box. His thumb passed over the hard leather of the holster, and then he shoved the holster and gun into his right hip pocket, beneath the poplin jacket. He lighted a cigarette, went into the kitchen to put up the coffee water, and then went to check on the kids.

Mickey was asleep, his thumb in his mouth as usual. He passed his hand over the boy's head. Christ, he was sweating like a pig. He'd have to talk to May about the air conditioning again. It wasn't fair to the kids, cooped up like this in a sweat box. He walked to Cathy's bed and went through the same ritual. She wasn't as perspired as her brother. Well, she was a girl, girls didn't sweat as much. He heard the kettle in the kitchen whistling loudly. He glanced at his watch, and then grinned.

He went into the kitchen, spooned two teaspoonfuls of instant coffee into a large cup, and then poured the boiling water over the powder. He drank the coffee black, without sugar. He felt himself coming awake at last, and he vowed for the hundredth time that he wouldn't try to catch any sleep before this tour, it was plain stupid. He should sleep when he got home, hell, what did he average this way? A couple of hours? And then it was time to go in. No, it was foolish. He'd have to talk to May about it. He gulped the coffee down, and then went into his bedroom again.

He liked to look at her asleep. He always felt a little sneaky and a little horny when he took advantage of her that way. Sleep was a kind of private thing, and it wasn't right to pry when somebody was completely unaware. But, God, she was beautiful when she was asleep, so what the hell, it wasn't fair. He watched her for several moments, the dark hair spread out over the pillow, the rich sweep of her hip and thigh, the femaleness of the raised gown and the exposed white flesh. He went to the side of the bed, and brushed the hair back from her temple. He kissed her very gently, but she stirred and said, "Mike?"

"Go back to sleep, honey."

"Are you leaving?" she murmured hoarsely.

"Yes."

"Be careful, Mike."

"I will." He grinned. "And you be good."

"Uhm," she said, and then she rolled over into the pillow. He sneaked a last look at her from the doorway, and then went through the living room and out of the house. He glanced at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. Right on schedule, and damn if it wasn't a lot cooler in the street.

At eleven forty-one, when Mike Reardon was three blocks away from his place of business, two bullets entered the back of his skull and ripped away half his face when they left his body. He felt only impact and sudden unbearable pain, and then vaguely heard the shots, and then everything inside him went dark, and he crumpled to the pavement.

He was dead before he struck the ground.

He had been a citizen of the city, and now his blood poured from his broken face and spread around him in a sticky red smear.

Another citizen found him at eleven fifty-six, and went to call the police. There was very little difference between the citizen who rushed down the street to a phone booth, and the citizen named Mike Reardon who lay crumpled and lifeless against the concrete.

Except one.

Mike Reardon was a cop.

Chapter TWO

the two homicide cops looked down at the body on the sidewalk. It was a hot night, and the flies swarmed around the sticky blood on the pavement. The assistant medical examiner was kneeling alongside the body, gravely studying it. A photographer from the Bureau of Identification was busily popping flash bulbs. Cars 23 and 24 were parked across the street, and the patrolmen from those cars were unhappily engaged in keeping back spectators.

The call had gone to one of the two switchboards at Headquarters where a sleepy patrolman had listlessly taken down the information and then shot it via pneumatic tube to the Radio Room. The dispatcher in the Radio Room, after consulting the huge precinct map on the wall behind him, had sent Car 23 to investigate and report on the allegedly bleeding man in the street. When Car 23 had reported back with a homicide, the dispatcher had contacted Car 24 and sent it to the scene. At the same time, the patrolman on the switchboard had called Homicide North and also the 87th Precinct, in which territory the body had been found.

The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theatre. The theatre had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theatre began showing second-run films, and then old movies, and finally foreign language films. There was a door to the left of the movie house, and the door had once been boarded, too, but the planks had been ripped loose and the staircase inside was littered with cigarette butts, empty pint whiskey bottles, and contraceptives. The marquee above the theatre stretched to the sidewalk, punched with jagged holes, the victim of thrown rocks, tin cans, hunks of pipe, and general debris.

Across the street from the theatre was an empty lot. The lot had once owned an apartment house, and the house had been a good one with high rents. It had not been unusual, in the old days, to see an occasional mink coat drifting from the marbled doorway of that apartment house. But the crawling tendrils of the slum had reached out for the brick, clutching it with tenacious fingers, pulling it into the ever-widening circle it called its own. The old building had succumbed, becoming a part of the slum, so that people rarely remembered it had once been a proud and elegant dwelling. And then it had been condemned, and the building had been razed to the ground, and now the lot was clear and open, except for the scattered brick rubble that still clung to the ground in some places. A City housing project, it was rumored, was going up in the lot. In the meantime, the kids used the lot for various purposes. Most of the purposes were concerned with bodily functions, and so a stench hung on the air over the lot, and the stench was particularly strong on a hot Summer night, and it drifted over toward the theatre, captured beneath the canopy of the overhanging marquee, smothering the sidewalk with its smell of life, mingling with the smell of death on the pavement

One of the Homicide cops moved away from the body and began scouring the sidewalk. The second cop stood with his hands in his back pockets. The assistant m.e. went through the ritual of ascertaining the death of a man who was certainly dead. The first cop came back.

"You see these?" he asked.

"What've you got?"

"Couple of ejected cartridge cases."

"Mm?"

"Remington slugs. .45 calibre."

"Put 'em in an envelope and tag 'em. You about finished, Doc?"

"In a minute."

The flash bulbs kept popping. The photographer worked like the press agent for a hit musical. He circled the star of the show, and he snapped his pictures from different angles, and all the while his face showed no expression, and the sweat streamed down his back, sticking his shirt to his flesh. The assistant m.e. ran his hand across his forehead.

"What the hell's keeping the boys from the 87th?" the first cop asked.

"Big poker game going, probably. We're better off without them." He turned to the assistant m.e. "What do you say, Doc?"

"I'm through." He rose wearily.

"What've you got?"

"Just what it looks like. He was shot twice in the back of the head. Death was probably instantaneous."

"Want to give us a time?"

"On a gunshot wound? Don't kid me."

"I thought you guys worked miracles."

"We do. But not during the Summer."

"Can't you even guess?"

"Sure, guessing's free. No rigor mortis yet, so I'd say he was killed maybe a half-hour ago. With this heat, though . . . hell, he might maintain normal body warmth for hours. You won't get us to go out on a limb with this one. Not even after the autopsy is ..."

"All right, all right. Mind if we find out who he is?"

"Just don't mess it up for the Lab boys. I'm taking off." The assistant m.e. glanced at his watch. "For the benefit of the timekeeper, it's 12:19."

"Short day today," the first Homicide cop said. He jotted the time down on the time table he'd kept since his arrival at the scene.

The second cop was kneeling near the body. He looked up suddenly. "He's heeled," he said.

"Yeah?"

The assistant m.e. walked away, mopping his brow.

"Looks like a .38," the second cop said. He examined the holstered gun more closely. "Yeah. Detective's Special. Want to tag this?"

"Sure." The first cop heard a car brake to a stop across the street. The front doors opened, and two men stepped out and headed for the knot around the body. "Here's the 87th now."

"Just in time for tea," the second cop said drily. "Who'd they send?"

"Looks like Carella and Bush." The first cop took a packet of rubber-banded tags from his right hand jacket pocket. He slipped one of the tags free from the rubber band, and then returned the rest to his pocket. The tag was a three-by-five rectangle of an oatmeal color. A hole was punched in one end of the tag, and a thin wire was threaded through the hole and twisted to form two loose ends. The tag read POLICE DEPARTMENT, and beneath that in bolder type: EVIDENCE.

Carella and Bush, from the 87th Precinct, walked over leisurely. The Homicide cop glanced at them cursorily, turned to the Where found space on the tag, and began filling it out. Carella wore a blue suit, his grey tie neatly clasped to his white shirt. Bush was wearing an orange sports shirt and khaki trousers.

"If it ain't Speedy Gonzales and Whirlaway," the second Homicide cop said. "You guys certainly move fast, all right. What do you do on a bomb scare?"

"We leave it to the Bomb Squad," Carella said drily. "What do you do?"

"You're very comical," the Homicide cop said.

"We got hung up."

"I can see that."

"I was catching alone when the squeal came in," Carella said. "Bush was out with Foster on a bar knifing. Reardon didn't show." Carella paused. "Ain't that right, Bush?" Bush nodded.

"If you're catching, what the hell are you doing here?" the first Homicide cop said.

Carella grinned. He was a big man, but not a heavy one. He gave an impression of great power, but the power was not a meaty one. It was, instead, a fine-honed muscular power. He wore his brown hair short. His eyes were brown, with a peculiar downward slant that gave him a clean-shaved Oriental appearance. He had wide shoulders and narrow hips, and he managed to look well-dressed and elegant even when he was dressed in a leather jacket for a waterfront plant. He had thick wrists and big hands, and he spread the hands wide now and said, "Me answer the phone when there's a homicide in progress?" His grin widened. "I left Foster to catch. Hell, he's practically a rookie."

"How's the graft these days?" the second Homicide cop asked.

"Up yours," Carella answered drily.

"Some guys get all the luck. You sure as hell don't get anything from a stiff."

"Except tsores," the first cop said.

"Talk English," Bush said genially. He was a soft-spoken man, and his quiet voice came as a surprise because he was all of six-feet-four inches and weighed at least two-twenty, bone dry. His hair was wild and unkempt, as if a wise Providence had fashioned his unruly thatch after his surname. His hair was also red, and it clashed violently against the orange sports shirt he wore. His arms hung from the sleeves of the shirt, muscular and thick. A jagged knife scar ran the length of his right arm.

The photographer walked over to where the detectives were chatting.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked angrily.

"We're trying to find out who he is," the second cop said. "Why? What's the matter?"

"I didn't say I was finished with him yet"

"Well, ain't you?"

"Yeah, but you should've asked."

"For Christ's sake, who are you working for? Conover?"

"You Homicide dicks give me a pain in the ..."

"Go home and emulsify some negatives or something, will you?"

The photographer glanced at his watch. He grunted and withheld the time purposely, so that the first cop had to glance at his own watch before jotting down the time on his time table. He subtracted a few minutes, and indicated a t.o.a. for Carella and Bush, too.

Carella looked down at the back of the dead man's head. His face remained expressionless, except for a faint, passing film of pain which covered his eyes for a moment, and then darted away as fleetingly as a jack-rabbit.

"What'd they use?" he asked. "A cannon?"

"A .45," the first cop said. "We've got the cartridge cases."

"How many?"

"Two."

"Figures," Carella said. "Why don't we flip him over?"

"Ambulance coming?" Bush asked quietly.

"Yeah," the first cop said. "Everybody's late tonight."

"Everybody's drowning in sweat tonight," Bush said. '1 can use a beer."

"Come on," Carella said, "give me a hand here."

The second cop bent down to help Carella. Together, they rolled the body over. The flies swarmed up angily, and then descended to the sidewalk again, and to the bloody broken flesh that had once been a face. In the darkness, Carella saw a gaping hole where the left eye should have been. There was another hole beneath the right eye, and the cheek bone was splintered outward, the jagged shards piercing the skin.

"Poor bastard," Carella said. He would never get used to staring death in the face. He had been a cop for twelve years now, and he had learned to stomach the sheer, overwhelming, physical impact of death—but he would never get used to the other thing about death, the invasion of privacy that came with death, the deduction of pulsating life to a pile of bloody, fleshy rubbish.

"Anybody got a flash?" Bush asked.

The first cop reached into his left hip pocket. He thumbed a button, a circle of light splashed onto the sidewalk.

"On his face," Bush said.

The light swung up onto the dead man's face.

Bush swallowed. "That's Reardon," he said, his voice very quiet. And then, almost in a whisper, "Jesus, that's Mike Reardon."

Chapter THREE

there were sixteen detectives assigned to the 87th Precinct, and David Foster was one of them. The precinct, in all truth, could have used a hundred and sixteen detectives and even then been understaffed. The precinct area spread South from the River Highway and the tall buildings which still boasted doormen and elevator operators to the Stem with its delicatessens and movie houses, on South to Culver Avenue and the Irish section, still South to the Puerto Rican section and then into Grover's Park, where muggers and rapists ran rife. Running East and West, the precinct covered a long total of some thirty-five city streets. And packed into this rectangle —North and South from the river to the park, East and West for thirty-five blocks—was a population of 90,000 people.

David Foster was one of those people. David Foster was a Negro.

He had been born in the precinct territory, and he had grown up there, and when he'd turned 21, being of sound mind and body, being four inches over the minimum requirement of five feet eight inches, having 20/20 vision without glasses, and not having any criminal record, he had taken the competitive Civil Service examination and had been appointed a patrolman.

The starting salary at the time had been $3,725 per annum, and Foster had earned his salary well. He had earned it so well that in the space of five years he had been appointed to the Detective Division. He was now a 3rd Grade Detective, and his salary was now $5,230 per annum, and he still earned it.

At one a.m., on the morning of July 24th, while a colleague named Mike Reardon lay spilling his blood into the gutter, David Foster was earning his salary by interrogating the man he and Bush had picked up in the bar knifing.

The interrogation was being conducted on the second floor of the precinct house. To the right of the desk on the first floor, there was an inconspicuous and dirty white sign with black letters which announced DETECTIVE DIVISION, and a pointing hand advised any visitor that the bulls hung out upstairs.

The stairs were metal, and narrow, but scrupulously clean. They went up for a total of sixteen risers, then turned back on themselves and continued on up for another sixteen risers, and there you were.

Where you were was a narrow, dimly-lighted corridor. There were two doors on the right of the open stairway, and a sign labeled them LOCKERS. If you turned left and walked down the corridor, you passed a wooden slatted bench on your left, a bench without a back on your right (set into a narrow alcove before the sealed doors of what had once been an elevator shaft), a door on your right marked MEN'S LAVATORY, and a door on your left over which a small sign hung, and the sign simply read CLERICAL.

At the end of the corridor was the Detective Squad Room.

You saw first a slatted rail divider. Beyond that, you saw desks and telephones, and a bulletin board with various photographs and notices on it, and a hanging light globe and beyond that more desks and the grilled windows that opened on the front of the building. You couldn't see very much that went on beyond the railing on your right because two huge metal filing cabinets blocked the desks on that side of the room. It was on that side of the room that Foster was interrogating the man he'd picked up in the bar earlier that night.

"What's your name?" he asked the man.

"No hablo ingles," the man said.

"Oh, hell," Foster said. He was a burly man with a deep chocolate coloring and warm brown eyes. He wore a white dress shirt, open at the throat. His sleeves were rolled up over muscular forearms.

"Cual es su nombre?" he asked in hesitant Spanish.

"Tomas Perillo."

"Your address?" He paused, thinking, "Direccion?"

"Tres-tres-cuatro Mei-son."

"Age? Edad?"

Perillo shrugged.

"All right," Foster said, "where's the knife? Oh, crap, we'll never get anywhere tonight. Look, donde esta el cuchillo? Puede usted decirme?"

"Creo que no."

"Why not? For Christ's sake, you had a knife, didn't you?"

"No se."

"Look, you son of a bitch, you know damn well you had a knife. A dozen people saw you with it. Now how about it?"

Perillo was silent.

"Tiene usted un cuchillo?" Foster asked.

"No."

"You're a liar!" Foster said. "You do have a knife. What'd you do with it after you slashed that guy in the bar?"

"Donde esta el servicio?" Perillo asked.

"Never mind where the hell the men's room is," Foster snapped. "Stand up straight, for Christ's sake. What the hell do you think this is, the pool room? Take your hands out of your pockets."

Perillo took his hands from his pockets.

"Now where's the knife?"

"No se."

"You don't know, you don't know," Foster mimicked. "All right, get the hell out of here. Sit down on the bench outside. I'm gonna get a cop in here who really speaks your language, pal. Now go sit down. Go ahead."

"Bien," Perillo said. "Donde esta el servicio?"

"Down the hall on your left And don't take all night in there."

Perillo went out. Foster grimaced. The man he'd cut hadn't been cut bad at all. If they knocked themselves out over every goddamn knifing they got, they'd be busy running down nothing but knifings. He wondered what it would be like to be stationed in a precinct where carving was something you did to a turkey. He grinned at his own humor, wheeled a typewriter over, and began typing up a report on the burglary they'd had several days back.

When Carella and Bush came in, they seemed in a big hurry. Carella walked directly to the phone, consulted a list of phone numbers beside it, and began dialing.

"What's up?" Foster said.

"That homicide," Carella answered.

"Yeah?"

"It was Mike."

"What do you mean? Huh?"

"Mike Reardon."

"What?" Foster said. "What?"

"Two slugs at the back of his head. I'm calling the Lieutenant. He's gonna want to move fast on this one."

"Hey, is he kidding?" Foster said to Bush, and then he saw the look on Bush's face, and he knew this was not a joke.

Lieutenant Byrnes was the man in charge of the 87th Detective Squad. He had a small, compact body and a head like a rivet. His eyes were blue and tiny, but those eyes had seen a hell of a lot, and they didn't miss very much that went on around the lieutenant. The lieutenant knew his precinct was a trouble spot, and that was the way he liked it. It was the bad neighborhoods that needed policemen, he was fond of saying, and he was proud to be a part of a squad that really earned its keep. There had once been sixteen men in his squad, and now there were fifteen.

Ten of those fifteen were gathered around him in the squad room, the remaining five being out on plants from which they could not be yanked. The men sat in their chairs, or on the edges of desks, or they stood near the grilled windows, or they leaned against filing cabinets. The squad room looked the way it might look at any of the times when the new shift was coming in to relieve the old one, except that there were no dirty jokes now. The men all knew that Mike Reardon was dead.

Acting Lieutenant Lynch stood alongside Byrnes while Byrnes filled his pipe. Byrnes had thick capable fingers, and he wadded the tobacco with his thumb, not looking up at the men.

Carella watched him. Carella admired and respected the lieutenant, even though many of the other men called him "an old turd." Carella knew cops who worked in precincts where the old man wielded a whip instead of a cerebellum. It wasn't good to work for a tyrant. Byrnes was all right, and Byrnes was also a good cop and a smart cop, and so Carella gave him his undivided attention, even though the lieutenant had not yet begun speaking.

Byrnes struck a wooden match and lighted his pipe. He gave the appearance of an unhurried man about to take his port after a heavy meal, but the wheels were grinding furiously inside his compact skull, and every fibre in his body was outraged at the death of one of his best men.

"No pep talk," he said suddenly. "Just go out and find the bastard." He blew out a cloud of smoke and then waved it away with one of his short, wide hands. "If you read the newspapers, and if you start believing them, you'll know that cops hate cop killers. That's the law of the jungle. That's the law of survival. The newspapers are full of crap if they think any revenge motive is attached. We can't let a cop be killed because a cop is a symbol of law and order. If you take away the symbol, you get animals in the streets. We've got enough animals in the streets now.

"So I want you to find Reardon's killer, but not because Reardon was a cop assigned to this precinct, and not even because Reardon was a good cop. I want you to find that bastard because Reardon was a man—and a damned fine man.

"Handle it however you want to, you know your jobs. Give me progress reports on whatever you get from the files, and whatever you get in the streets. But find him. That's all."

The lieutenant went back into his office with Lynch, and some of the cops went to the modus operandi file and began digging for information on thugs who used .45's. Some of the cops went to the Lousy File, the file of known criminals in the precinct, and they began searching for any cheap thieves who may have crossed Mike Reardon's path at one time or another. Some of the cops went to the Convictions file and began a methodical search of cards listing every conviction for which the precinct had been responsible, with a special eye out for cases on which Mike Reardon had worked. Foster went out into the corridor and told the suspect he'd questioned to get the hell home and to keep his nose clean. The rest of the cops took to the streets, and Carella and Bush were among them.

"He gripes my ass," Bush said. "He thinks he's Napoleon."

"He's a good man," Carella said.

"Well, he seems to think so, anyway."

"Everything gripes you," Carella said. "You're maladjusted."

"I'll tell you one thing," Bush said. "I'm getting an ulcer in this goddamn precinct. I never had trouble before, but since I got assigned to this precinct, I'm getting an ulcer. Now how do you account for that?"

There were a good many possible ways to account for Bush's ulcer and none of them had anything whatever to do with the precinct. But Carella didn't feel like arguing at the moment, and so he kept his peace. Bush simply nodded sourly.

"I want to call my wife," he said.

"At two in the morning?" Carella asked incredulously.

"What's the matter with that?" Bush wanted to know. He was suddenly antagonistic.

"Nothing. Go ahead, call her."

"I just want to check," Bush said, and then he said, "Check in."

"Sure."

"Hell, we may be going for days on this one."

"Sure."

"Anything wrong with calling her to let her know what's up?"

"Listen, are you looking for an argument?" Carella asked, smiling.

"No."

"Then go call your wife, and get the hell off my back."

Bush nodded emphatically. They stopped outside an open candy store on Culver, and Bush went in to make his call. Carella stood outside, his back to the open counter at the store's front.

The city was very quiet. The tenements stretched grimy fingers toward the soft muzzle of the sky. Occasionally, a bathroom light winked like an opening eye in an otherwise blinded face. Two young Irish girls walked past the candy store, their high heels clattering on the pavement. He glanced momentarily at their legs and the thin summer frocks they wore. One of the girls winked unashamedly at him, and then both girls began giggling, and for no good reason he remembered something about lifting the skirts of an Irish lass, and the thought came to him full-blown so that he knew it was stored somewhere in his memory, and it seemed to him he had read it. Irish lasses, Ulysses? Christ, that had been one hell of a book to get through, pretty little lasses and all. I wonder what Bush reads? Bush is too busy to read. Bush is too busy worrying about his wife, Jesus, does that man worry.

He glanced over his shoulder. Bush was still in the booth, talking rapidly. The man behind the counter leaned over a racing form, a toothpick angling up out of his mouth. A young kid sat at the end of the counter drinking an egg cream. Carella sucked in a breath of fetid air. The door to the phone booth opened, and Bush stepped out, mopping his brow. He nodded at the counterman, and then went out to join Carella.

"Hot as hell in that booth," he said.

"Everything okay?" Carella asked.

"Sure," Bush said. He looked at Carella suspiciously. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"No reason. Any ideas where we should start?"

"This isn't going to be such a cinch," Bush said. "Any stupid son of a bitch with a grudge could've done it."

"Or anybody in the middle of committing a crime."

"We ought to leave it to Homicide. We're in over our heads."

"We haven't even started yet, and you say we're in over our heads. What the hell's wrong with you, Hank?"

"Nothing," Bush said, "only I don't happen to think of cops as masterminds, that's all."

"That's a nice thing for a cop to say."

"It's the truth. Look, this detective tag is a bunch of crap, and you know it as well as I do. All you need to be a detective is a strong pair of legs, and a stubborn streak. The legs take you around to all the various dumps you have to go to, and the stubborn streak keeps you from quitting. You follow each separate trail mechanically, and if you're lucky, one of the trails pays off. If you're not lucky, it doesn't. Period."

"And brains don't enter into it at all, huh?"

"Only a little. It doesn't take much brains to be a cop."

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I don't want to argue. If Reardon got it trying to stop somebody in the commission of a crime..."

"That's another thing that burns me up about cops," Bush said.

"You're a regular cop hater, aren't you?" Carella asked

"This whole goddamn city is full of cop haters. You think anybody respects a cop? Symbol of law and order, crap! The old man ought to get out there and face life. Anybody who ever got a parking tag is automatically a cop hater. That's the way it is."

"Well, it sure as hell shouldn't be that way," Carella said, somewhat angrily.

Bush shrugged. "What burns me up about cops is they don't speak English."

"What?"

"In the commission of a crime!" Bush mocked. "Cop talk. Did you ever hear a cop say 'We caught him?' No. He says, 'We apprehended him.'"

"I never heard a cop say 'We apprehended him,'" Carella said.

"I'm talking about for official publication," Bush said.

"Well, that's different. Everybody talks fancy when it's for official publication."

"Cops especially."

"Why don't you turn in your shield? Become a hackie or something?"

"I'm toying with the idea." Bush smiled suddenly. His entire tirade had been delivered in his normally hushed voice, and now that he was smiling, it was difficult to remember that he'd been angry at all.

"Anyway, I thought the bars," Carella said. "I mean, if this is a grudge kind of thing, it might've been somebody from the neighborhood. And we may be able to pick up something in the bars. Who the hell knows?"

"I can use a beer, anyway," Bush said. "I've been wanting a beer ever since I come on tonight."

The Shamrock was one of a million bars all over the world with the same name. It squatted on Culver Avenue between a pawn shop and a Chinese laundry. It was an all-night joint, and it catered to the Irish clientele that lined Culver. Occasionally, a Puerto Rican wandered into The Shamrock, but such offtrail excursions were discouraged by those among The Shamrock's customers who owned quick tempers and powerful fists. The cops stopped at the bar often, not to wet their whistles—because drinking on duty was strictly forbidden by the rules and regulations—but to make sure that too many quick tempers did not mix with too much whiskey or too many fists. The flareups within the gaily decorated walls of the bar were now few and far between, or—to be poetic— less frequent than they had been in the good old days when the neighborhood had first succumbed to the Puerto Rican assault wave. In those days, not speaking English too well, not reading signs too well, the Puerto Ricans stumbled into The Shamrock with remarkably ignorant rapidity. The staunch defenders of America for the Americans, casually ignoring the fact that Puerto Ricans were and are Americans, spent many a pugilistic evening proving their point. The bar was often brilliantly decorated with spilled blood. But that was in the good old days. In the bad new days, you could go into The Shamrock for a week running, and not see more than one or two broken heads.

There was a Ladies Invited sign in the window of the bar, but not many ladies accepted the invitation. The drinkers were, instead, neighborhood men who tired of the four walls of their dreary tenement flats, who sought the carefree camaraderie of other men who had similarly grown weary of their own homes. Their wives were out playing Bingo on Tuesdays, or at the movies collecting a piece of china on Wednesdays, or across the street with the Sewing Club ("We so and so and so and so") on Thursdays, and so it went. So what was wrong with a friendly brew in a neighborhood tavern? Nothing.

Except when the cops showed.

Now there was something very disgusting about policemen in general, and bulls in particular. Sure, you could go through the motions of saying, "How are yuh, this evenin', Officer Dugan?" and all that sort of rot, and you could really and truly maybe hold a fond spot in the old ticker for the new rookie, but you still couldn't deny that a cop sitting next to you when you were halfway toward getting a snootful was a somewhat disconcerting thing and would likely bring on the goblins in the morning. Not that anyone had anything against cops. It was just that cops should not loiter around bars and spoil a man's earnest drinking. Nor should cops hang around book joints and spoil a man's earnest gambling. Nor should they hang around brothels and spoil a man's earnest endeavors to, cops simply shouldn't hang around, that was all.

And bulls, bulls were cops in disguise, only worse.

So what did those two big jerks at the end of the bar want?

"A beer, Harry," Bush said.

"Comin' up," Harry the bartender answered. He drew the beer and brought it over to where Bush and Carella were seated. "Good night for a beer, ain't it?" Harry said.

"I never knew a bartender who didn't give you a commercial when you ordered a beer on a hot night," Bush said quietly.

Harry laughed, but only because his customer was a cop. Two men at the shuffleboard table were arguing about an Irish free state. The late movie on television was about a Russian empress.

"You fellows here on business?" Harry asked.

"Why?" Bush said. "You got any for us?"

"No, I was just wonderin'. I mean, it ain't often we get the bu ... it ain't often a detective drops by," Harry said.

"That's because you run such a clean establishment," Bush said.

"Ain't none cleaner on Culver."

"Not since they ripped your phone booth out," Bush said.

"Yeah, well, we were gettin' too many phone calls."

"You were taking too many bets," Bush said, his voice even. He picked up the glass of beer, dipped his upper lip into the foam, and then downed it.

"No, no kiddin'," Harry said. He did not like to think of the close call he'd had with that damn phone booth and the State Attorney's Commission. "You fellows lookin' for somebody?"

"Kind of quiet tonight," Carella said.

Harry smiled, and a gold tooth flashed at the front of his mouth. "Oh, always quiet in here, fellows, you know that."

"Sure," Carella said, nodding. "Danny Gimp drop in?"

"No, haven't seen him tonight. Why? What's up?"

"That's good beer," Bush said.

"Like another?"

"No, thanks."

"Say, are you sure nothing's wrong?" Harry asked.

"What's with you, Harry? Somebody do something wrong here?" Carella asked.

"What? No, hey no, I hope I didn't give you that impression. It's just kind of strange, you fellows dropping in. I mean, we haven't had any trouble here or anything."

"Well, that's good," Carella said. "See anybody with a gun lately?"

"A gun?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of a gun?"

"What kind did you see?"

"I didn't see any kind." Harry was sweating. He drew a beer for himself and drank it hastily.

"None of the young punks in with zip guns or anything?" Bush asked quietly.

"Oh, well zip guns," Harry said, wiping the foam from his lip, "I mean, you see them all the time."

"And nothing bigger?"

"Bigger like what? Like you mean a .32 or a .38?"

"Like we mean a .45," Carella said.

"The last .45 I seen in here," Harry said, thinking, "was away back in . . ." He shook his head. "No, that wouldn't help you. What happened? Somebody get shot?"

"Away back when?" Bush asked.

"Fifty, fifty-one, it must've been. Kid discharged from the Army. Come in here wavin' a .45 around. He was lookin' for trouble, all right, that kid. Dooley busted it up. You remember Dooley? He used to have this beat before he got transferred out to another precinct. Nice kid. Always used to stop by and..."

"He still live in the neighborhood?" Bush asked.

"Huh? Who?"

"The guy who was in here waving the .45 around."

"Oh, him." Harry's brows swooped down over his eyes. "Why?"

"I'm asking you," Bush said. "Does he or doesn't he?"

"Yeah. I guess. Why?"

"Where?"

"Listen," Harry said, "I don't want to get nobody in trouble."

"You're not getting anybody in trouble," Bush said. "Does this guy still own the .45?"

"I don't know."

"What happened that night? When Dooley busted it up."

"Nothing. The kid had a load on. You know, just out of the Army, like that."

"Like what?"

"Like he was wavin' the gun around. I don't even think it was loaded. I think the barrel was leaded."

"Are you sure it was?"

"Well, no."

"Did Dooley take the gun away from him?"

"Well . . ." Harry paused and mopped his brow. "Well, I don't think Dooley even saw the gun."

"If he busted it up ..."

"Well," Harry said, "one of the fellows saw Dooley comin' down the street, and they kind of calmed the kid down and got him out of here."

"Before Dooley came in?"

"Well, yeah. Yeah."

"And the kid took the gun with him when he left?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Look, I didn't want no trouble in my place, you follow?"

"I follow," Bush said. "Where does he live?"

Harry blinked his eyes. He looked down at the bar top.

"Where?" Bush repeated.

"On Culver."

"Where on Culver?"

'The house on the corner of Culver and Mason. Look, fellows ..."

"This guy mention anything about not liking cops?" Carella asked.

"No, no," Harry said. "He's a fine boy. He just had a couple of sheets to the wind that night, that's all."

"You know Mike Reardon?"

"Oh, sure," Harry said.

"This kid know Mike?"

"Well, I can't say as I know. Look, the kid was just squiffed that night, that's all"

"What's his name?"

"Look, he was only tanked up, that's all. Hell, it was away back in 1950."

"What's his name?"

"Frank. Frank Clarke. With an 'e'."

"What do you think, Steve?" Bush asked Carella.

Carella shrugged. "It came too easy. It's never good when it comes that easy."

"Let's check it, anyway," Bush said.

Chapter FOUR

there are smells inside a tenement, and they are not only the smell of cabbage. The smell of cabbage, to many, is and always will be a good wholesome smell and there are many who resent the steady propaganda which links cabbage with poverty.

The smell inside a tenement is the smell of life.

It is the smell of every function of life, the sweating, the cooking, the elimination, the breeding. It is all these smells and they are wedded into one gigantic smell which hits the nostrils the moment you enter the downstairs doorway. For the smell has been inside the building for decades. It has seeped through the floorboards and permeated the walls. It clings to the banister and the linoleum covered steps. It crouches in corners and it hovers about the naked light bulbs on each landing. The smell is always there, day and night. It is the stench of living, and it never sees the light of day, and it never sees the crisp brittleness of starlight.

It was there on the morning of July 24th at 3:00 A.M. It was there in full force because the heat of the day had baked it into the walls. It hit Carella as he and Bush entered the building. He snorted through his nostrils and then struck a match and held it to the mailboxes.

"There it is," Bush said. "Clarke. 3B."

Carella shook out the match and they walked toward the steps. The garbage cans were in for the night, stacked on the ground floor landing behind the steps. Their aroma joined the other smells to clash in a medley of putridity. The building slept, but the smells were awake. On the second floor, a man—or a woman—snored loudly. On each door, close to the floor, the circular trap for a milk bottle lock hung despondently, awaiting the milkman's arrival. On one of the doors hung a plaque, and the plaque read IN GOD WE TRUST. And behind that door, there was undoubtedly the

unbending steel bar of a police lock, embedded in the floor and tilted to lean against the door.

Carella and Bush labored up to the third floor. The light bulb on the third floor landing was out Bush struck a match.

"Down the hall there."

"You want to do this up big?" Carella asked.

"He's got a .45 in there, hasn't he?"

"Still."

"What the hell, my wife doesn't need my insurance money." Bush said.

They walked to the door and flanked it. They drew their service revolvers with nonchalance. Carella didn't for a moment believe he'd need his gun, but caution never hurt. He drew back his left hand and knocked on the door.

"Probably asleep," Bush said.

"Betokens a clear conscience," Carella answered. He knocked again.

"Who is it?" a voice answered.

"Police. Want to open up?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," the voice mumbled. "Just a minute."

"We won't need these," Bush said. He holstered his gun, and Carella followed suit. From within the apartment, they could hear bed springs creaking, and then a woman's voice asking, "What is it?" They heard footsteps approaching the door, and then someone fumbled with the police lock on the inside, and the heavy steel bar clattered when it was dropped to the floor. The door opened a crack.

"What do you want?" the voice said.

"Police. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"At this time of the morning? Jesus Christ, can't it wait?"

"Afraid it can't."

"Well, what's the matter? There a burglar in the building?"

"No. We'd just like to ask you some questions. You're Frank Clarke, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Clarke paused. "Let me see your badge."

Carella reached into his pocket for the leather case to which his shield was pinned. He held it up to the crack in the door.

"I can't see nothing," Clarke said. "Just a minute."

"Who is it?" the woman asked.

"The cops," Clarke mumbled. He stepped away from the door, and then a light flashed inside the apartment. He came back to the door. Carella held up the badge again.

"Yeah, okay," Clarke said. "What do you want?"

"You own a .45, Clarke?"

"What?"

"A .45. Do you own one?"

"Jesus, is that what you want to know? Is that what you come banging on the door for in the middle of the night? Ain't you guys got any sense at all? I got to go to work in the morning."

"Do you have a .45, or don't you?"

"Who said I had one?"

"Never mind who. How about it?"

"Why do you want to know? I been here all night."

"Anybody to swear for that?"

Clarke's voice lowered. "Hey, look, fellows, I got somebody with me, you know what I mean? Look, give me a break, will you?"

"What about the gun?"

"Yeah, I got one."

"A .45?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's a .45."

"Mind if we take a look at it?"

"What for? I've got a permit for it."

"We'd like to look at it anyway."

"Hey, look, what the hell kind of a routine is this, anyway? I told you I got a permit for the gun. What did I do wrong? Whattya want from me, anyway?"

"We want to see the .45," Bush said. "Get it."

"You got a search warrant?" Clarke asked.

"Never mind the crap," Bush said. "Get the gun."

"You can't come in here without a search warrant. And you can't bulldoze me into gettin' the gun, either. I don't want to get that gun, then you can whistle."

"How old's the girl in there?" Bush asked.

"What?"

"You heard me. Wake up, Clarke!"

"She's 21, and you're barkin' up the wrong tree," Clarke said. "We're engaged."

From down the hall, someone shouted, "Hey, shut up, will-ya? For Christ's sake! Go down to the poolroom, you want to talk!"

"How about letting us in, Clarke?" Carella asked gently. "We're waking your neighbors."

"I don't have to let you in noplace. Go get a search warrant."

"I know you don't, Clarke. But a cop's been killed, and he was killed with a .45, and if I were you I wouldn't play this so goddamn cosy. Now how about opening that door and showing us you're clean? How about it, Clarke?"

"A cop? Jesus, a cop! Jesus, why didn't you say so? Just a ... just a minute, willya? Just a minute." He moved away from the door. Carella could hear him talking to the woman, and he could hear the woman's whispered answer. Clarke came back to the door and took off the night chain. "Come on in," he said.

There were dishes stacked in the kitchen sink. The kitchen was a six-by-eight rectangle, and adjoining that was the bedroom. The girl stood in the bedroom doorway. She was a short blonde, somewhat dumpy. She wore a man's bathrobe. Her eyes were puffed with sleep, and she wore no makeup. She blinked her eyes and stared at Carella and Bush as they moved into the kitchen.

Clarke was a short man with bushy black brows and brown eyes. His nose was long, broken sharply in the middle. His lips were thick, and he needed a shave badly. He was wearing pajama pants and nothing else. He stood bare-chested and bare-footed in the glare of the kitchen light. The water tap dripped its tattoo onto the dirty dishes in the sink.

"Let's see the gun," Bush said.

"I got a permit for it," Clarke answered. "Okay if I smoke?"

"It's your apartment."

"Gladys," Clarke said, "there's a pack on the dresser. Bring some matches, too, willya?" The girl moved into the darkness of the bedroom, and Clarke whispered, "You guys sure picked a hell of a time to come calling, all right." He tried to smile, but neither Carella or Bush seemed amused, and so he dropped it instantly. The girl came back with the package of cigarettes. She hung one on her lip, and then handed the pack to Clarke. He lighted his own cigarette and then handed the matches to the blonde.

"What kind of a permit?" Carella asked. "Carry or premises?"

"Carry," Clarke said.

"How come?"

"Well, it used to be premises. I registered the gun when I got out of the Army. It was a gift," he said quickly, "From my captain."

"Go ahead."

"So I got a premises permit when I was discharged. That's the law, ain't it?"

"You're telling the story," Bush said.

"Well, that's the way I understood it. Either that, or I had to get the barrel leaded up. I don't remember. Anyway, I got the permit."

'7s the barrel leaded?"

"Hell, no. What do I need a permit for a dead gun for? I had this premises permit, and then I got a job with a jeweler, you know? Like I had to make a lot of valuable deliveries, things like that. So I had it changed to a carry permit."

"When was this?"

"Couple of months back."

"Which jeweler do you work for?"

"I quit that job," Clarke said.

"All right, get the gun. And get the permit, too, while you're at it."

"Sure," Clarke said. He went to the sink, held his cigarette under the dripping tap, and then dropped the soggy butt in with the dishes. He walked past the girl and into the bedroom.

"This is some time of night to be asking questions," the girl said angrily.

"We're sorry, Miss," Carella said.

"Yeah, I'll bet you are."

"We didn't mean to disturb your beauty sleep," Bush said nastily.

The girl raised one eyebrow. "Then why did you?" She blew out a cloud of smoke, the way she had seen movie sirens do. Clarke came back into the room holding the .45. Bush's hand moved imperceptibly toward his right hip and the holster there.

"Put it on the table," Carella said.

Clarke put the gun on the table.

"Is it loaded?" Carella asked.

"I think so."

"Don't you know?"

"I ain't even looked at the thing since I quit that job."

Carella draped a handkerchief over his spread fingers and picked up the gun. He slid the magazine out. "It"s loaded, all right," he said. Quickly, he sniffed the barrel.

"You don't have to smell," Clarke said. "It ain't been fired since I got out of the Army."

"It came close once, though, didn't it?"

"Huh?"

"That night in The Shamrock."

"Oh, that," Clarke said. "Is that why you're here? Hell, I was looped that night. I didn't mean no harm."

Carella slammed the magazine back into place. "Where's the permit, Clarke?"

"Oh, yeah. I looked around in there. I couldn't find it."

"You're sure you've got one?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I just can't find it."

"You'd better take another look. A good one, this time."

"I did take a good look. I can't find it. Look, I got a permit. You can check on it. I wouldn't kid you. Who was the cop got killed?"

"Want to take another look for that permit?"

"I already told you, I can't find it. Look, I got one."

"You had one, pal," Carella said. "You just lost it"

"Huh? What? What'd you say?"

"When a cop asks you for your permit, you produce it or you lose it."

"Well, Jesus, I just misplaced it temporarily. Look, you can check all this. I mean . . . look, what's the matter with you guys, anyway? I didn't do nothing. I been here all night. You can ask Gladys. Ain't that right, Gladys?"

"He's been here all night," Gladys said.

"We're taking the gun," Carella said. "Give him a receipt for it, Hank."

"That ain't been fired in years," Clarke said. "You'll see. And you check on that permit. I got one. You check on it."

"We'll let you know," Carella said. "You weren't planning On leaving the city, were you?"

"What?"

"You weren't plann ..."

"Hell, no. Where would I go?"

"Back to sleep is as good a place as any," the blonde said.

Chapter FIVE

the pistol permit was on Steve Carella's desk when he reported for work at 4:00 P.M. on the afternoon of July 24th. He had worked until eight in the morning, gone home for six hours sleep, and was back at his desk now, looking a little bleary-eyed but otherwise none the worse for wear.

The heat had persisted all day long, a heavy yellow blanket that smothered the city in its wooly grip. Carella did not like the heat. He had never liked Summer, even as a kid, and now that he was an adult and a cop, the only memorable characteristic Summer seemed to have was that it made dead bodies stink quicker.

He loosened his collar the instant he entered the squad room, and when he got to his desk, he rolled up his sleeves, and then picked up the pistol permit.

Quickly, he scanned the printed form:

PISTOL LICENSE APPLICATION

I Hereby Apply for License to

Carry a Revolver or Pistol upon my person or

Possession on premises: 37-12 Culver Avenue

For the following reasons: Make deliveries for jewelry firm.

Clarke Francis D. 37-12 Culver Ave.

There was more, a lot more, but it didn't interest Carella. Clarke had indeed owned a pistol permit—but that didn't mean he hadn't used the pistol on a cop named Mike Reardon.

Carella shoved the permit to one side of his desk, glanced at his watch, and then reached for the phone automatically. Quickly, he dialed Bush's home number and then waited, his hand sweating on the receiver. The phone rang six times, and then a woman's voice said, "Hello?"

"Alice?"

"Who's this?"

"Steve Carella."

"Oh. Hello, Steve."

"Did I wake you?"

"Yes."

"Hank's not here yet. He's all right, isn't he?"

"He left a little while ago," Alice said. The sleep was beginning to leave her voice already. Alice Bush was a cop's wife who generally slept when her husband did, adjusting her schedule to fit his. Carella had spoken to her on a good many mornings and afternoons, and he always marveled at the way she could come almost instantly awake within the space of three or four sentences. Her voice invariably sounded like the first faint rattle of impending death when she picked up the receiver. As the conversation progressed, it modulated into the dulcet whine of a middle-aged Airedale, and then into the disconcertingly sexy voice which was the normal speaking voice of Hank's wife. Carella had met her on one occasion, when he and Hank had shared a late snack with her, and he knew that she was a dynamic blonde with a magnificent figure and the brownest eyes he'd ever seen. From what Bush had expansively delivered about personal aspects of his home life, Carella knew that Alice slept in clinging black, sheer nightgowns. The knowledge was unnerving, for whenever Carella roused her out of bed, he automatically formed a mental picture of the well-rounded blonde he'd met, and the picture was always dressed as Hank had described it

He generally, therefore, cut his conversations with Alice short, feeling somewhat guilty about the artistic inclinations of his mind. This morning, though, Alice seemed to be in a talkative mood.

"I understand one of your colleagues got knocked off," she said.

Carella smiled, in spite of the topic's grimness. Alice sometimes had a peculiar way of mixing the King's English with choice bits of underworld and police vernacular.

"Yes," he said.

"I'm awfully sorry," she answered, her mood and her voice changing. "Please be careful, you and Hank. If a cheap hood is shooting up the streets ..."

"We'll be careful," he said. "I've got to go now, Alice,"

"I leave Hank in capable hands," Alice said, and she hung up without saying goodbye.

Carella grinned and shrugged, and then put the receiver back into the cradle. David Foster, his brown face looking scrubbed and shining, ambled over to the desk. "Afternoon, Steve," he said.

"Hi, Dave. What've you got?"

"Ballistics report on that .45 you brought in last night."

"Any luck?"

"Hasn't been fired since Old King Cole ordered the bowl."

"Well, that narrows it down," Carella said. "Now we've only got the nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand other people in this fair city to contend with."

"I don't like it when cops get killed," Foster said. His brow lowered menacingly, giving him the appearance of a bull ducking his head to charge at the muleta. "Mike was my partner. He was a good guy."

"I know."

"I been trying to think who," Foster said. "I got my personal I.B. right up here, and I been leafing through them mug shots one by one." He tapped his temple. "I been turning them over and studying them, and so far I haven't got anything, but give me time. Somebody musta had it in for Mike, and when that face falls into place, that guy's gonna wish he was in Alaska."

"Tell you the truth," Carella said, "I wish I was there right now."

"Hot, ain't it?" Foster said, classically understating the temperature and humidity.

"Yeah." From the corner of his eye, Carella saw Bush walk down the corridor, push through the railing, and sign in. He walked to Carella's desk, pulled over a swivel chair and plopped into it disconsolately.

"Rough night?" Foster asked, grinning. "The roughest," Bush said in his quiet voice.

"Clarke was a blank," Carella told him.

'I figured as much. Where do we go from here?"

"That's a good question."

"Coroner's report in yet?"

"No."

"The boys picked up some hoods for questioning," Foster said. "We might give them the once over."

"Where are they? Downstairs?" Carella asked.

"In the Waldorf Suite," Foster said, referring to the detention cells on the first floor of the building.

"Why don't you call down for them?"

"Sure," Foster said.

"Where's the Skipper?"

"He's over at Homicide North. He's trying to goose them into some real action on this one."

"You see the paper this morning?" Bush asked.

"No," Carella said.

"Mike made the front page. Have a look." He put the paper on Carella's desk. Carella held it up so that Foster could see it while he spoke on the phone.

"Shot him in the back," Foster mumbled. "That lousy bastard." He spoke into the phone and then hung up. The men lighted cigarettes, and Bush phoned out for coffee, and then they sat around gassing. The prisoners arrived before the coffee did.

There were two men, both unshaven, both tall, both wearing short-sleeved sports shirts. The physical resemblance ended there. One of the men owned a handsome face, with regular features and white, even teeth. The other man looked as if his face had challenged a concrete mixer and lost. Carella recognized both of them at once. Mentally, he flipped over their cards in the Lousy File.

"Were they picked up together?" he asked the Uniformed cop who brought them into the squad room.

"Yeah," the cop said.

"Where?"

"13th and Shippe. They were sitting in a parked car."

"Any law against that?" the handsome one asked.

"At three in the morning," the uniformed cop added.

"Okay," Carella said. "Thanks."

"What's your name?" Bush asked the handsome one.

"You know my name, cop."

"Say it again. I like the sound."

"I'm tired."

"You're gonna be a lot more tired before this is finished. Now cut the comedy, and answer the questions. Your name?"

"Terry."

'Terry what?"

"Terry McCarthy. What the hell is this, a joke? You know my name."

"How about your buddy?"

"You know him, too. He's Clarence Kelly."

"What were you doing in that car?" Carella asked.

"Lookin" at dirty pictures," McCarthy said.

"Possession of pornography," Carella said dully. "Take that down, Hank."

"Hey, wait a minute," McCarthy said. "I was only wise-crackin'."

"DON'T WISECRACK ON MY TIME!!" Carella shouted.

"Okay, okay, don't get sore."

"What were you doing in that car?"

"Sitting."

"You always sit in parked cars at three in the a.m.?" Foster asked.

"Sometimes," McCarthy said.

"What else were you doing?"

"Talking."

"What about?"

"Everything."

"Philosophy?" Bush asked.

"Yeah," McCarthy said.

"What'd you decide?"

"We decided it ain't wise to sit in parked cars at three in the morning. There's always some cop who's got to fill his pinch book."

Carella tapped a pencil on the desk. "Don't get me mad, McCarthy," he said. "I just come from six hours sleep, and I don't feel like listening to a vaudeville routine. Did you know Mike Reardon?"

"Who?"

"Mike Reardon. A detective attached to this precinct."

McCarthy shrugged. He turned to Kelly. "We know him, Clarence?"

"Yeah," Clarence said. "Reardon. That rings a bell."

"How big a bell?" Foster asked.

"Just a tiny tinkle so far," Kelly said, and he began laugh-ing. The laugh died when he saw the bulls weren't quite appreciating his humor.

"Did you see him last night?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"We didn't run across any bulls last night," Kelly said. "Do you usually?" "Well, sometimes."

"Were you heeled when they pulled you in?" "What?"

"Come on," Foster said. "No."

"We'll check that."

"Yeah, go ahead," McCarthy said. "We didn't even have a water pistol between us."

"What were you doing in the car?"

"I just told you," McCarthy said.

"The story stinks. Try again," Carella answered.

Kelly sighed, McCarthy looked at him.

"Well?" Carella said.

"I was checkin' up on my dame," Kelly said.

"Yeah?" Bush said.

"Truth," Kelly said. "So help me Jesus, may I be struck dead right this goddamn minute."

"What's there to check up on?" Bush asked.

"Well, you know."

"No, I don't know. Tell me."

"I figured she was maybe slippin' around."

"Slipping around with who?" Bush asked.

"Well, that's what I wanted to find out."

"And what were you doing with him, McCarthy?"

"I was helping him check," McCarthy said, smiling.

"Was she?" Bush asked, a bored expression on his face.

"No, I don't think so," Kelly said.

"Don't check again," Bush said. "Next time we're liable to find you with the burglar's tools."

"Burglar's tools!" McCarthy said shocked.

"Gee, Detective Bush," Kelly said, "you know us better than that."

"Get the hell out of here," Bush said. "We can go home?"

"You can go to hell, for my part," Bush informed them.

"Here's the coffee," Foster said.

The released prisoners sauntered out of the Squad Room. The three detectives paid the delivery boy for the coffee and then pulled chairs up to one of the desks.

"I heard a good one last night," Foster said.

"Let's hear it," Carella prompted.

"This guy is a construction worker, you see?"

"Yeah."

"Working up on a girder about sixty floors above the street."

"Yeah?"

"The lunch whistle blows. He knocks off, goes to the end of the girder, sits down, and puts his lunch box on his lap. He opens the box, takes out a sandwich and very carefully unwraps the waxed paper. Then he bites into it. 'Goddamn!' he says, 'peanut butter!' and he throws the sandwich down the sixty floors to the street."

"I don't get it," Bush said, sipping at his coffee.

"I'm not finished yet," Foster said, grinning, hardly able to contain his glee.

"Go ahead," Carella said.

"He reaches into the box," Foster said, "for the next sandwich. He very carefully unwraps the waxed paper. He bites into the sandwich. 'Goddamn!' he says again, 'peanut butter!' and he flings that second sandwich down the sixty floors to the street."

"Yeah," Carella said.

"He opens the third sandwich," Foster said. "This time it's ham. This time he likes it. He eats the sandwich all up."

"This is gonna go on all night," Bush said. "You shoulda stood in bed, Dave."

"No, wait a minute, wait a minute," Foster said. "He opens.the fourth sandwich. He bites into it. 'Goddamn!' he says again, 'peanut butter!' and he flings that sandwich too down the sixty floors to the street. Well, there's another construction worker sitting on a girder just a little bit above this fellow. He looks down and says, 'Say, fellow, I've been watching you with them sandwiches.'

"'So what?' the first guy says.

"'You married?' the second guy asks.

"'Yes, I'm married."

"The second guy shakes his head. 'How long you been married?"

"Ten years," the first guy says.

"'And your wife still doesn't know what kind of sandwiches you like?'

'The first guy points his finger up at the guy above him and yells, "Listen, you son of a bitch, leave my wife out of this. I made those goddamn sandwiches myself!'"

Carella burst out laughing, almost choking on his coffee. Bush stared at Foster dead-panned.

"I still don't get it," Bush said. "What's so funny about a guy married ten years whose wife doesn't know what kind of sandwiches he likes? That's not funny. That's a tragedy."

"He made the sandwiches himself," Foster said.

"So then it's a psycho joke. Psycho jokes don't appeal to me. You got to be nuts to appreciate a psycho joke."

"I appreciate it," Carella said.

"So? That proves my point," Bush answered.

"Hank didn't get enough sleep," Carella said to Foster. Foster winked.

"I got plenty of sleep," Bush said.

"Ah-ha," Carella said. "Then that explains it."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Bush said, annoyed.

"Oh, forget it. Drink your coffee."

"A man doesn't get a joke, right away his sex life gets dragged in. Do I ask you how much sleep you get or don't get?"

"No," Carella said.

"Okay. Okay."

One of the patrolmen walked into the Squad Room. "Desk sergeant asked me to give you this," he said. "Just came up from Downtown."

"Probably that Coroner's report," Carella said, taking the manila envelope. "Thanks."

The patrolman nodded and went out. Carella opened the envelope.

"Is it?" Foster asked.

"Yeah. Something else, too." He pulled a card from the envelope. "Oh, report on the slugs they dug out of the theatre booth."

"Let's see it," Hank said.

Carella handed him the card.

BULLET

Calibre: .45 Weight: 230 grms. Twist: 16L No. of Grooves: 6

Deceased: Michael Reardon Date: July 24

Remarks: Remington bullet taken from wooden booth behind body of Michael Reardon.

"Argh, so what does it tell us?" Bush said, still smarting from the earlier badinage.

"Nothing," Carella answered, "until we get the gun that fired it."

"What about the Coroner's report?" Foster asked.

Carella slipped it out of the envelope.

CORONER'S PRELIMINARY AUTOPSY REPORT

MICHAEL REARDON

Male, apparent age 42; chronological age 38. Approximate weight 210 pounds; height 28.9 cm.

Gross Inspection

HEAD: 1.0 x 1.25 cm circular perforation visible 3.1 centimeters laterally to the left of external occipital protuberance (inion). Wound edges slightly inverted. Flame zone and second zone reveal heavy embedding of powder grains. A number 22 catheter inserted through the wound in the occipital region of the skull transverses ventrally and emerges through the right orbit Point of emergence has left a gaping rough-edged wound measuring 3.7 centimeters in diameter.

There is a second perforation located 6.2 centimeters laterally to the left of the tip of the right mastoid process of the temporal bone, measuring 1.0 x 1.33 centimeters. A number 22 catheter inserted through this second wound passes anteriorly and ventrally and emerges through a perforation measuring approximately 3.5 centimeters in diameter through the right maxilla. The edges of the remaining portion of the right maxilla are splintered.

BODY: Gross inspection of remaining portion of body is negative for demonstrable pathology.

REMARKS: On craniotomy with brain examination, there is evidence of petechiae along course of projectile; small splinters of cranial bone are embedded within the brain substance.

MICROSCOPIC: Examination of brain reveals minute petechiae as well as bone substance within brain matter. Microscopic examination of brain tissue is essentially negative for pathology.

"He did a good job, the bastard," Foster said. "Yeah," Bush answered.

Carella sighed and looked at his watch. "It's going to be a long night, fellers," he said.

Chapter SIX

he had not seen Teddy Franklin since Mike took the slugs.

Generally, in the course of running down something, he would drop in to see her, spending a few minutes with her before rushing off again. And, of course, he spent all his free time with her because he was in love with the girl.

He had met her less than six months ago, when she'd been working addressing envelopes for a small firm on the fringe of the precinct territory. The firm reported a burglary, and Carella had been assigned to it. He had been taken instantly with her buoyant beauty, asked her out, and that had been the beginning. He had also, in the course of investigation, cracked the burglary—but that didn't seem important now. The important thing now was Teddy. Even the firm had gone the way of most small firms, fading into the abyss of a corporate dissolution, leaving her without a job but with enough saved money to maintain herself for a while. He honestly hoped it would only be for a while, a short while at that. This was the girl he wanted to marry. This was the girl he wanted for his own.

Thinking of her, thinking of the progression of slow traffic lights which kept him from racing to her side, he cursed Ballistics Reports and Coroner's Reports, and people who shot cops in the back of the head, and he cursed the devilish instrument known as the telephone and the fact that the instrument was worthless with a girl like Teddy. He glanced at his watch. It was close to midnight, and she didn't know he was coming, but he'd take the chance, anyway. He wanted to see her.

When he reached her apartment building in Riverhead, he parked the car and locked it The street was very quiet. The building was old and sedate, covered with lush ivy. A few windows blinked wide-eyed at the stifling heat of the night, but most of the tenants were asleep or trying to sleep. He glanced up at her window, pleased when he saw the light was still burning. Quickly, he mounted the steps, stopping outside her door.

He did not knock.

Knocking was no good with Teddy.

He took the knob in his hand and twisted it back and forth, back and forth. In a few moments, he heard her footsteps, and then the door opened a crack, and then the door opened wide.

She was wearing prisoner pajamas, white-and-black striped cotton top and pants she'd picked up as a gag. Her hair was raven black, and the light in the foyer put a high sheen onto it. He closed the door behind him, and she went instantly into his arms, and then she moved back from him, and he marveled at the expressiveness of her eyes and her mouth. There was joy in her eyes, pure soaring joy. Her lips parted, edging back over small white teeth, and then she lifted her face to his, and he took her kiss, and he felt the warmth of her body beneath the cotton pajamas.

"Hello," he said, and she kissed the words on his mouth, and then broke away, holding only his hand, pulling him into the warmly-lighted living room.

She held her right index finger alongside her face, calling for his attention.

"Yes?" he said, and then she shook her head, changing her mind, wanting him to sit first. She fluffed a pillow for him, and he sat in the easy chair, and she perched herself on the arm of the chair and cocked her head to one side, repeating the extended index finger gesture.

"Go ahead," he said, "I'm listening."

She watched his lips carefully, and then she smiled. Her index finger dropped. There was a white tag sewed onto the prisoner pajama top close to the mound of her left breast. She ran the extended finger across the tag. He looked at it closely.

"I'm not examining your feminine attributes," he said, smiling, and she shook her head, understanding. She had inked numbers onto the tag, carrying out the prison garb motif. He studied the numbers closely.

"My shield numbers," he said, and the smile flowered on her mouth. "You deserve a kiss for that," he told her.

She shook her head.

"No kiss?"

She shook her head again.

"Why not?"

She opened and closed the fingers on her right hand.

"You want to talk?" he asked.

She nodded.

"What about?"

She left the arm of the chair suddenly. He watched her walking across the room, his eyes inadvertently following the swing of her small, rounded backside. She went to an end-table and picked up a newspaper. She carried it back to him and then pointed to the picture of Mike Reardon on page one, his brains spilling out onto the sidewalk.

"Yeah," he said dully.

There was sadness on her face now, an exaggerated sadness because Teddy could not give tongue to words, Teddy could neither hear words, and so her face was her speaking tool, and she spoke in exaggerated syllables, even to Carella, who understood the slightest nuance of expression hi her eyes or on her mouth. But the exaggeration did not lie, for there was genuineness to the grief she felt. She had never met Mike Reardon, but Carella had talked of him often, and she felt that she knew him well.

She raised her eyebrows and spread her hands simultaneously, asking Carella "Who?" and Carella, understanding instantly, said, "We don't know yet. That's why I haven't been around. We've been working on it." He saw puzzlement in her eyes. "Am I going too fast for you?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"What then? What's the matter?"

She threw herself into his arms and she was weeping suddenly and fiercely, and he said, "Hey, hey, come on, now," and then realized she could not read his lips because her head was buried in his shoulder. He lifted her chin.

"You're getting my shirt wet," he said.

She nodded, trying to hold back the tears.

"What's the matter?"

She lifted her hand slowly, and she touched his cheek gently, so gently that it felt like the passing of a mild breeze, and then her fingers touched his lips and lingered there, caressing them.

"You're worried about me?"

She nodded.

"There's nothing to worry about."

She tossed her hair at the first page of the newspaper again.

"That was probably some crackpot," Carella said.

She lifted her face, and her eyes met his fully, wide and brown, still moist from the tears.

"I'll be careful," he said. "Do you love me?"

She nodded, and then ducked her head.

"What's the matter?"

She shrugged and smiled, an embarrassed, shy smile.

"You missed me?"

She nodded again.

"I missed you, too."

She lifted her head again, and there was something else in her eyes this time, a challenge to him to read her eyes correctly this time, because she had truly missed him but he had not uncovered the subtlety of her meaning as yet. He studied her eyes, and then he knew what she was saying, and he said only, "Oh."

She knew that he knew then, and she cocked one eyebrow saucily and slowly gave one exaggerated nod of her head, repeating his "oh," soundlessly rounding her lips.

"You're just a fleshpot," he said jokingly.

She nodded.

"You only love me because I have a clean, strong, young body."

She nodded.

"Will you marry me?"

She nodded.

"I've only asked you about a dozen times so far."

She shrugged and nodded, enjoying herself immensely.

"When?"

She pointed at him.

"All right, I'll set the date. I'm getting my vacation in August. I'll marry you then, okay?"

She sat perfectly still, staring at him.

"I mean it."

She seemed ready to cry again. He took her in his arms and said, "I mean it, Teddy. Teddy, darling, I mean it. Don't be silly about this, Teddy, because I honestly, truly mean it. I love you, and I want to marry you, and I've wanted to marry you for a long, long time now, and if I have to keep asking you, I'll go nuts. I love you just the way you are, I wouldn't change any of you, darling, so

don't get silly, please don't get silly again. It ... it doesn't matter to me, can you understand that? You're more than any other woman, so much more, so please marry me."

She looked up at him, wishing she could speak because she could not trust her eyes now, wondering why someone as beautiful as Steve Carella, as wonderful as Steve Carella, as brave and as strong and as marvelous as Steve Carella would went to marry a girl like her, a girl who could never say, "I love you, darling. I adore you." But he had asked her again, and now, close in the circle of his arms, now she could believe that it didn't really matter to him, that to him she was as whole as any woman, "more than any other woman," he had said.

"Okay?" he asked. "Will you let me make you honest?" She nodded. The nod was a very small one. "You mean it this time?"

She did not nod again. She lifted her mouth, and she put her answer into her lips, and his arms tightened around her, and she knew that he understood her. She broke away from him, and he said, "Hey!" but she trotted away from his reach and went to the kitchen.

When she brought back the champagne, he said, "I'll be damned!"

She sighed, agreeing that he undoubtedly would be damned, and he slapped her playfully on the fanny.

She handed him the bottle, did a deep curtsy which was ludicrous in the prisoner pajamas and then sat on the floor cross-legged while he struggled with the cork.

The champagne exploded with an enormous pop, and though she did not hear the sound, she saw the cork leave the neck of the bottle and ricochet off the ceiling, and she saw the bubbly white fluid overspilling the lip and running over his hands.

She began to clap, and then she got to her feet and went for glasses, and he poured first a little of the wine into his, saying, "That's the way it's done, you know. It's supposed to take off the skim and the bugs and everything," and then filling her glass, and then going back to pour his to the brim.

"To us," he toasted.

She opened her arms slowly, wider and wider and wider.

"A long, long, happy love," he supplied.

She nodded happily.

"And our marriage in August" They clinked glasses, and then sipped at the wine, and she opened her eyes wide in pleasure and cocked her head appreciatively.

"Did you mean what you said before?"

"Are you happy?" he asked.

Yes, her eyes said, yes, yes.

She raised one brow inquisitively.

"About... missing me?"

Yes, yes, yes, yes, her eyes said.

"You're beautiful."

She curtsied again.

"Everything about you. I love you, Teddy. Jesus, how I love you."

She put down the wine glass and then took his hand. She kissed the palm of the hand, and the back, and then she led him into the bedroom, and she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers, her hands moving gently. He lay down on the bed, and she turned off the light and then, unselfconsciously, unembarrassedly, she took off the pajamas and went to him.

And while they made gentle love in a small room in a big apartment house, a man named David Foster walked toward his own apartment, an apartment he shared with his mother.

And while their love grew fierce and then gentle again, a man named David Foster thought about his partner Mike Reardon, and so immersed in his thoughts was he that he did not hear the footsteps behind him, and when he finally did hear them, it was too late.

He started to turn, but a .45 automatic spat orange flame into the night, once, twice, again, again, and David Foster clutched at his chest, and the red blood burst through his brown fingers, and then he hit the concrete—dead.

Chapter SEVEN

there is not much you can say to a man's mother when the man is dead. There is not much you can say at all.

Carella sat in the doilied easy chair and looked across at Mrs. Foster. The early afternoon sunlight seeped through the drawn blinds in the small, neat living room, narrow razor-edge bands of brilliance against the cool dimness. The heat in the streets was still insufferable, and he was thankful for the cool living room, but his topic was death, and he would have preferred the heat.

Mrs. Foster was a small, dried-up woman. Her face was wrinkled and seamed, as brown as David's had been. She sat hunched hi the chair, a small withered woman with a withered face and withered hands, and he thought A strong wind would blow her away, poor woman, and he watched the grief that lay quietly contained behind the expressionless withered face.

"David was a good boy," she said. Her voice was hollow, a narrow sepulchral voice. He had come to talk of death, and now he could smell death on this woman, could hear death in the creak of her voice, and he thought it strange that David Foster, her son, who was alive and strong and young several hours ago was now dead—and his mother, who had probably longed for the peaceful sleep of death many a time, was alive and talking to Carella.

"Always a good boy. You raise 'em in a neighborhood like this one," Mrs. Foster said, "and you fear for how they'll turn out. My husband was a good worker, but he died young, and it wasn't always easy to see that David wasn't needing. But he was a good boy, always. He would come home and tell me what the other boys were doing, the stealing and all the things they were doing, and I knew he was all right."

"Yes, Mrs. Foster," Carella said.

"And they all liked him around here, too," Mrs. Foster went on, shaking her head. "All the boys he grew up with, and all the old folks, too. The people around here, Mr. Carella, they don't take much to cops. But they liked my David because he grew up among them, and he was a part of them, and I guess they were sort of proud of him, the way I was proud."

"We were all proud of him, Mrs. Foster," Carella said.

"He was a good cop, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he was a fine cop."

"Then why would anyone want to kill him?" Mrs. Foster asked. "Oh, I knew his job was a dangerous one, yes, but this is different, this is senseless. He wasn't even on duty. He was coming home. Who would want to shoot my boy, Mr. Carella. Who would want to shoot my boy?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Foster. I hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions."

"If it'll help you find the man who killed David, I'll answer questions all day for you." "Did he ever talk about his work?"

"Yes, he did. He always told me what happened around the precinct, what you were working on. He told me about his partner being killed, and he told me he was leafing through pictures in his mind, just waiting until he hit the right one."

"Did he say anything else about the pictures? Did he say he suspected anyone?" "No."

"Mrs. Foster, what about his friends?" "Everyone was his friend."

"Did he have an address book or anything in which their names might be listed?"

"I don't think he had an address book, but there's a pad near the telephone he always used." "May I have that before I leave?" "Certainly."

"Did he have a sweetheart?"

"No, not anyone steady. He went out with a lot of different girls."

"Did he keep a diary?"

"No."

"Does he have a photograph collection?" "Yes, he liked music a lot. He was always playing his records whenever he..."

"No, not phonograph. Photograph."

"Oh. No. He carried a few pictures in his wallet, but that's all."

"Did he ever tell you where he went on his free time?" "Oh, lots of different places. He liked the theatre a lot The stage, I mean. He went often."

"These boyhood friends of his. Did he pal around with them much?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Did he drink?"

"Not heavily."

"I mean, would you know whether or not he frequented any of the bars in the neighborhood? Social drinking, of course."

"I don't know."

"Had he received any threatening letters or notes that you know of?"

"He never mentioned any."

"Ever behave peculiarly on the telephone?"

"Peculiarly? What do you mean?"

"Well, as if he were trying to hide something from you. Or as if he were worried . . . anything like that. I'm thinking of threatening calls, Mrs. Foster."

"No, I don't ever remember him acting strange on the phone."

"I see. Well . . ." Carella consulted his notes. "I guess that's about it. I want to get going, Mrs. Foster, because there's a lot of work to do. If you could get me that telephone pad..."

"Yes, of course." She rose, and he watched her slight body as she moved out of the cool living room into one of the bedrooms. When she returned, she handed him the pad and said, "Keep it as long as you like."

"Thank you. Mrs. Foster, please know that we all share your sorrow," he said lamely.

"Find my boy's killer," Mrs. Foster said. She extended one of her withered hands and took his hand in a strong, firm grip, and he marvelled at the strength of the grip, and at the strength in her eyes and on her face. Only when he was in the hallway, with the door locked behind him, did he hear the gentle sobs that came from within the apartment.

He went downstairs and out to the car. When he reached the car, he took off his jacket, wiped his face, and then sat behind the wheel to study his worksheet:

statement of eyewitnesses: None.

motive: Revenge? Con? Nut? Tie-in with Mike? Check Ballistics report.

number of murderers: Two? One Mike, one David.

Or tie-in? B.R. again.

weapons: .45 automatic.

route of murderer:?

diaries, journals, letters, addresses, telephone

numbers, photographs: Check with David's mthr.

associates, relatives, sweethearts, enemies, etc: Ditto.

places frequented, hang-outs: Ditto.

habits: Ditto.

traces and clues found on the scene: Heelprint in dog feces. At lab now. Four shells. Two bullets. Ditto.

fingerprints found: None.

Carella scratched his head, sighed against the heat, and then headed back for the precinct house to see if the new Ballistics report had come in yet.

The widow of Michael Reardon was a full-breasted woman in her late thirties. She had dark hair and green eyes, and an Irish nose spattered with a clicheful of freckles. She had a face for merry-go-rounds and roller-coaster rides, a face that could split in laughter and girlish glee when water was splashed on her at the seashore. She was a girl who could get drunk sniffing the vermouth cork before it was passed over a martini. She was a girl who went to church on Sundays, a girl who'd belonged to the Newman Club when she was younger, a girl who was a virgin two days after Mike had taken her for his bride. She had good legs, very white, and a good body, and her name was May.

She was dressed in black on the hot afternoon of July 25th, and her feet were planted firmly on the floor before her, and her hands were folded in her lap, and there was no laughter on the face made for roller-coaster rides.

"I haven't told the children yet," she said to Bush. "The children don't know. How can I tell them? What can I say?" '

"It's a rough thing," Bush said in his quiet voice. His scalp felt sticky and moist. He needed a haircut, and his wild red hair was shrieking against the heat.

"Yes," May said. "Can I get you a beer or something? It's very hot. Mike used to take a beer when he got home. No matter what time it was, he always took a beer. He was a very well-ordered person. I mean, he did things carefully and on schedule. I think he wouldn't have been able to sleep if he didn't have that glass of beer when he got home."

"Did he ever stop in the neighborhood bars?"

"No. He always drank here, in the house. And never whiskey. Only one or two glasses of beer."

Mike Reardon, Bush thought. He used to be a cop and a friend. Now he's a victim and a corpse, and I ask questions about him.

"We were supposed to get an air-conditioning unit," May said. "At least, we talked about it. This apartment gets awfully hot. That's because we're so close to the building next door."

"Yes," Bush said. "Mrs. Reardon, did Mike have any enemies that you know of? I mean, people he knew outside his line of duty?"

"No, I don't think so. Mike was a very easy-going sort Well, you worked with him. You know."

"Can you tell me what happened the night he was killed? Before he left the house?"

"I was sleeping when he left. Whenever he had the twelve-to-eight tour, we argued about whether we should try to get any sleep before he went in."

"Argued?"

"Well, you know, we discussed it. Mike preferred staying up, but I have two children, and I'm beat when it hits ten o'clock. So he usually compromised on those nights, and we both got to bed early—at about nine, I suppose."

"Were you asleep when he left?"

"Yes. But I woke up just before he went out."

"Did he say anything to you? Anything that might indicate he was worried about an ambush? Had he received a threat or anything?"

"No." May Reardon glanced at her watch. "I have to be leaving soon, Detective Bush. I have an appointment at the funeral parlor. I wanted to ask you about that. I know you're doing tests on ... on the body and all ... but the family . . . Well, the family is kind of old-fashioned and we want to ... we want to make arrangements. Do you have any idea when . .. when you'll be finished with him?"

"Soon, Mrs. Reardon. We don't want to miss any bets. A careful autopsy may put us closer to finding his killer."

"Yes, I know. I didn't want you to think . . . it's just the family. They ask questions. They don't understand. They don't know what it means to have him gone, to wake up in the morning and not. . . not have him here." She bit her lip and turned her face from Bush. "Forgive me. Mike wouldn't . . . wouldn't like this. Mike wouldn't want me to . . ." She shook her head and swallowed heavily. Bush watched her, feeling sudden empathy for this woman who was Wife, feeling sudden compassion for all women everywhere who had ever had their men torn from them by violence. His thoughts wandered to Alice, and he wondered idly how she would feel if he stopped a bullet, and then he put the thought out of his mind. It wasn't good to think things like that. Not these days. Not after two in a row. Jesus, was it possible there was a nut loose? Somebody who'd marked the whole goddamn precinct as his special target?

Yes, it was possible.

It was very damn possible, and so it wasn't good to think about things like Alice's reaction to his own death. You thought about things like that, and they consumed your mind, and then when you needed a clear mind which could react quickly to possible danger, you didn't have it. And that's when you were up the creek without a paddle.

What had Mike Reardon been thinking of when he'd been gunned down?

What had been in the mind of David Foster when the four slugs ripped into his body?

Of course, it was possible the two deaths were unrelated. Possible, but not very probable. The m.o. was remarkably similar, and once the Ballistics report came through they'd know for sure whether they were dealing with one man or two.

Bush's money was on the one-man possibility.

"If there's anything else you want to ask me," May said. She had pulled herself together now, and she faced him squarely, her face white, her eyes large.

"If you'll just collect any address books, photographs, telephone numbers, newspaper clippings he may have saved, anything that may give us a lead onto his friends or even his relatives, I'd be much obliged."

"Yes, I can do that," May said.

"And you can't remember anything unusual that may have some bearing on this, is that right?"

"No, I can't. Detective Bush, what am I going to tell the kids? I sent them off to a movie. I told them their daddy was out on a plant. But how long can I keep it from them? How do you tell a pair of kids that their father is dead? Oh God, what am I going to do?"

Bush remained silent. In a little while, May Reardon went for the stuff he wanted.

At 3:42 P.M. on July 25th, the Ballistics report reached Carella's desk. The shells and bullets found at the scene of Mike Reardon's death had been put beneath the comparison microscope together with the shells and bullets used in the killing of David Foster.

The Ballistics report stated that the same weapon had been used in both murders.

Chapter EIGHT

on the night that David Foster was killed, a careless mongrel searching for food in garbage cans had paused long enough to sully the sidewalk of the city. The dog had been careless, to be sure, and a human being had been just as careless, and there was a portion of a heelprint for the Lab boys to work over, solely because of this combined record of carelessness. The Lab boys turned to with something akin to distaste.

The heelprint was instantly photographed, not because the boys liked to play with cameras, but simply because they knew accidents frequently occurred in the making of a cast. The heelprint was placed on a black-stained cardboard scale, marked off in inches. The camera, supported above the print by a reversible tripod, the lens parallel to the print to avoid any false perspectives, clicked merrily away. Satisfied that the heelprint was now preserved for posterity—photographically, at least—the Lab boys turned to the less antiseptic task of making the cast.

One of the boys filled a rubber cup with half a pint of water. Then he spread plaster of Paris over the water, taking care not to stir it, allowing it to sink to the bottom of its own volition. He kept adding plaster of Paris until the water couldn't absorb anymore of it, until he'd dumped about ten ounces of it into the cup. Then he brought the cup to one of the other boys who was preparing the print to take the mixture.

Because the print was in a soft material, it was sprayed first with shellac and then with a thin coat of oil. The plaster of Paris mixture was stirred and then carefully applied to the prepared print. It was applied with a spoon in small portions. When the print was covered to a thickness of about one-third of an inch, the boys spread pieces of twine and sticks onto the plaster to reinforce it, taking care that the debris did not touch the bottom of the print and destroy its details. They then applied another coat of plaster to the print, and allowed the cast to harden. From time to time, they touched the plaster, feeling for warmth, knowing that warmth meant the cast was hardening.

Since there was only one print, and since it was not even a full print, and since it was impossible to get a Walking Picture from this single print, and since the formula

r ra rv raa 11 Ib

H -- BS --- --- ---- --- --- X,

l la Iv laa rl rb

a formula designed to give the complete picture of a man's walk in terms of step length, breadth of step, length of left foot, right foot, greatest width of left foot, right foot, wear on heel and sole—since the formula could not be applied to a single print, the Lab boys did all they could with what they had.

And they decided, after careful study, that the heel was badly worn on the outside edge, a peculiarity which told them the man belonging to that heel undoubtedly walked with a somewhat duck-like waddle. They also decided that the heel was not the original heel of the shoe, that it was a rubber heel which had been put on during a repair job, and that the third nail from the shank side of the heel, on the left, had been bent when applying the new heel.

And—quite coincidentally if the heelprint happened to have been left by the murderer—the heel bore the clearly stamped trade name "O'Sullivan," and everyone knows that O'Sullivan is America's Number One Heel.

The joke was an old one. The Lab boys hardly laughed at all.

The newspapers were not laughing very much, either.

The newspapers were taking this business of cop-killing quite seriously. Two morning tabloids, showing remarkable versatility in headlining the same incident, respectively reported the death of David Foster with the words SECOND COP SLAIN and KILLER SLAYS 2ND COP.

The afternoon tabloid, a newspaper hard-pressed to keep up with the circulation of the morning sheets, boldly announced KILLER ROAMS STREETS. And then, because this particular newspaper was vying for circulation, and because this particular newspaper made it a point to "expose" anything which happened to be in the public's eye at the moment—anything from Daniel Boone to long winter underwear, anything which gave them a free circulation ride on the then-popular bandwagon—their front page carried a red banner that day, and the red banner shouted "The Police Jungle—What Goes On In Our Precincts" and then in smaller white type against the red, "See Murray Schneider, p. 4."

And anyone who had the guts to wade through the first three pages of cheesecake and chest-thumping liberalism, discovered on page four that Murray Schneider blamed the deaths of Mike Reardon and David Foster upon "the graft-loaded corruptness of our filth-ridden Gestapo."

In the graft-loaded Squad Room of the corrupt 87th Precinct, two detectives named Steve Carella and Hank Bush stood behind a filth-ridden desk and pored over several cards their equally corrupt fellow-officers had dug from the Convictions File.

"Try this for size," Bush said.

"I'm listening," Carella said.

"Some punk gets pinched by Mike and Dave, right?"

"Right."

"The judge throws the book at him, and he gets room and board from the State for the next five or ten years. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Then he gets out. He's had a lot of time to mull this over, a lot of time to build up his original peeve into a big hate. The one thing in his mind is to get Mike and Dave. So he goes out for them. He gets Mike first, and then he tries to get Dave quick, before this hate of his cools down. Wham, he gets Dave, too."

"It reads good," Carella said.

"That's why I don't buy this Flannagan punk."

"Why not?"

'Take a look at the card. Burglary, possession of burglary tools, a rape away back in '47. Mike and Dave got him on the last burglary pinch. This was the first time he got convicted, and he drew ten, just got out last month on parole after doing five years."

"So."

"So I don't figure a guy with a big hate is going to be good enough to cut ten years to five. Besides, Flannagan never carried a gun all the while he was working. He was a gent."

"Guns are easy to come by?'

"Sure. But I don't figure him for our man."

"I'd like to check him out, anyway," Carella said.

"Okay, but I want to check this other guy out first Or-diz. Luis 'Dizzy' Ordiz. Take a look at the card."

Carella pulled the conviction card closer. The card was a 4x6 white rectangle, divided into printed rectangles of various sizes and shapes.

"A hophead," Carella said.

"Yeah. Figure the hate a hophead can build hi four years' time."

"He went the distance?"

"Got out the beginning of the month," Bush said. "Cold turkey all that time. This don't build brotherly love for the cops who made the nab."

"No, it doesn't."

"Figure this, too. Take a look at his record. He was picked up in '51 on a dis cond charge. This was before he got on the junk, allegedly. But he was carrying a .45. The gun had a busted hammer, but it was still a .45. Go back to '49. Again, dis cond, fighting in a bar. Had a .45 on him, no busted hammer this time. He got off lucky that time. Suspended sentence."

"Seems to favor .45's."

"Like the guy who killed Mike and Dave. What do you say?"

"I say we take a look. Where is he?"

Bush shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Danny Gimp was a man who'd had polio when he was a child. He was lucky in that it had not truly crippled him. He had come out of the disease with only a slight limp, and a nickname which would last him the rest of his life. His real surname was Nelson, but very few people knew that, and he was referred to in the neighborhood as Danny Gimp. Even his letters came addressed that way.

Danny was fifty-four years old, but it was impossible to judge his age from his face or his body. He was very small, small all over, his bones, his features, his eyes, his stature. He moved with the loose-hipped walk of an adolescent, and his voice was high and reedy, and his face bore hardly any wrinkles or other telltale signs of age.

Danny Gimp was a stool pigeon.

He was a very valuable man, and the men of the 87th Precinct called him in regularly, and Danny was always ready to comply—whenever he could. It was a rare occasion when Danny could not supply the piece of information the bulls were looking for. On these occasions, there were other stool-ies to talk to. Somewhere, somebody had the goods. It was simply a question of finding the right man at the right time.

Danny could usually be found in the third booth on the right hand side of a bar named Andy's Pub. He was not an alcoholic, nor did he even drink to excess. He simply used the bar as a sort of office. It was cheaper than paying rent someplace downtown, and it had the added attraction of a phone booth which he used regularly. The bar, too, was a good place to listen—and listening was one-half of Danny's business. The other half was talking.

He sat opposite Carella and Bush, and first he listened.

Then he talked.

"Dizzy Ordiz," be said. "Yeah, yeah."

"You know where he is?"

"What'd he do?"

"We don't know."

"Last I heard, he was on the state."

"He got out at the beginning of the month."

"Parole?"

"No."

"Ordiz, Ordiz. Oh, yeah. He's a junkie."

"That's right."

"Should be easy to locate. What'd he do?"

"Maybe nothing," Bush said. "Maybe a hell of a lot."

"Oh, you thinking of these cop kills?" Danny asked.

Bush shrugged.

"Not Ordiz. You're barkin' up the wrong tree."

"What makes you say so?"

Danny sipped at his beer, and then glanced up at the rotating fan. "You'd never know there was a fan going in this dump, would you? Jesus, this heat don't break soon, I'm headin' for Canada. I got a friend up there. Quebec. You ever been to Quebec?"

"No," Bush said.

"Nice there. Cool."

"What about Ordiz?"

"Take him with, me, he wants to come," Danny said, and then he began laughing at his own joke.

"He's cute today," Carella said.

"I'm cute all the time," Danny said. "I got more dames lined up outside my room than you can count on an abacus. I'm the cutest."

"We didn't know you was pimping," Bush said.

"I ain't. This is all for love."

"How much love you got for Ordiz?"

"Don't know him from a hole in the wall. Don't care to, either. Hopheads make me puke."

"Okay, then where is he?"

"I don't know yet. Give me some time."

"How much time?"

"Hour, two hours. Junkies are easy to trace. Talk to a few pushers, zing, you're in. He got out the beginning of the month, huh? That means he's back on it strong by now. This should be a cinch."

"He may have kicked it," Carella said. "It may not be such a cinch."-

"They never kick it," Danny said. "Don't pay attention to fairy tales. He was probably gettin' the stuff sneaked in even up the river. I'll find him. But if you think he knocked off your buddies, you're wrong."

"Why?"

"I seen this jerk around. He's a nowhere. A real trom-benik, if you dig foreign. He don't know enough to come in out of an atom bomb attack. He got one big thing hi his life. Horse. That's Ordiz. He lives for the White God. Only thing on his mind."

"Reardon and Foster sent him away," Carella said.

"So what? You think a junkie bears a grudge? All part of the game. He ain't got time for grudges. He only got time for meetin' his pusher and makin' the buy. This guy Ordiz, he was always half-blind on the stuff. He couldn't see straight enough to shoot off his own big toe. So he's gonna cool two cops? Don't be ridic."

"We'd like to see him, anyway," Bush said.

"Sure. Do I tell you how to run headquarters? Am I the commissioner? But this guy is from Squaresville, fellas, I'm telling you. He wouldn't know a .45 from a cement mixer."

"He's owned a few in his life," Carella said.

"Playing with them, playing with them. If one of them things ever went off within a hundred yards of him, he'd have diarrhea for a week. Take it from me, he don't care about nothin' but heroin. Listen, they don't call him Dizzy for nothin'. He's dizzy. He's got butterflies up here. He chases them away with H."

"I don't trust junkies," Bush said.

"Neither do I," Danny answered. "But this guy ain't a killer, take it from me. He don't even know how to kill time."

"Do us a favor," Carella said.

"Sure."

"Find him for us. You know our number." "Sure. I'll buzz you in an hour or so. This is gonna be a cinch. Hopheads are a cinch."

Chapter NINE

the heat on that July 26th reached a high of 95.6 at twelve noon. At the precinct house, two fans circulated the soggy air that crawled past the open windows and the grilles behind them. Everything in the Detective Squad Room seemed to wilt under the steady, malignant pressure of the heat. Only the file cabinets and the desks stood at strict attention. Reports, file cards, carbon paper, envelopes, memos, all of these were damp and sticky to the touch, clinging to wherever they were dropped, clinging with a moist limpidity.

The men in the Squad Room worked in their shirt sleeves. Their shirts were stained with perspiration, large dark amoeba blots which nibbled at the cloth, spreading from beneath the armpits, spreading from the hollow of the spinal column. The fans did not help the heat at all. The fans circulated the suffocating breath of the city, and the men sucked in the breath and typed up their reports in triplicate, and checked their worksheets, and dreamt of Summers in the White Mountains, or Summers in Atlantic City with the ocean slapping their faces. They called complainants, and they called suspects, and their hands sweated on the black plastic of the phone, and they could feel Heat like a living thing which invaded their bodies and seared them with a million white-hot daggers.

Lieutenant Byrnes was as hot as any man in the Squad Room. His office was just to the left of the slatted dividing railing, and it had a large corner window, but the window was wide open and not a breath of a breeze came through it. The reporter sitting opposite him looked cool. The reporter's name was Savage, and the reporter was wearing a blue seersucker suit and a dark blue Panama, and the reporter was smoking a cigarette and casually puffing the smoke up at the ceiling where the heat held it in a solid blue-grey mass.

"There's nothing more I can tell you," Byrnes said. The reporter annoyed him immensely. He did not for a moment believe that any man on this earth had been born with a name like "Savage." He further did not believe that any man on this earth, on this day, could actually be as cool as Savage pretended he was.

"Nothing more, Lieutenant?" Savage asked, his voice very soft. He was a handsome man with close-cropped blond hair and a straight, almost-feminine nose. His eyes were grey, cool. Cool.

"Nothing," the Lieutenant said. "What the hell did you expect? If we knew who did it, we'd have him in here, don't you think?"

"I should imagine so," Savage said. "Suspects?"

"We're working on it."

"Suspects?" Savage repeated.

"A few. The suspects are our business. You splash them on your front page, and they'll head for Europe."

"Think a kid did it?"

"What do you mean, a kid?"

"A teen-ager."

"Anybody could've done it," Byrnes said. "For all I know, you did it."

Savage smiled, exposing bright white teeth. "Lots of teenage gangs in this precinct, aren't there?"

"We've got the gangs under control. This precinct isn't the garden spot of the city, Savage, but we like to feel we're doing the best job possible here. Now I realize your newspaper may take offense at that, but we really try, Savage, we honestly try to do our little jobs."

"Do I detect sarcasm in your voice, Lieutenant?" Savage asked.

"Sarcasm is a weapon of the intellectual, Savage. Everybody, especially your newspaper, knows that cops are just stupid, plodding beasts of burden."

"My paper never said that, Lieutenant."

"No?" Byrnes shrugged. "Well, you can use it in tomorrow's edition."

"We're trying to help," Savage said. "We don't like cops getting killed anymore than you do." Savage paused. "What about the teen-age gang idea?"

"We haven't even considered it This isn't the way those gangs operate. Why the hell do you guys try to pin everything that happens in this city on the teen-agers? My son is a teenager, and he doesn't go around killing cops."

"That's encouraging," Savage said.

"The gang phenomenon is a peculiar one to understand," Byrnes said. "I'm not saying we've got it licked, but we do have it under control. If we've stopped the street tumbles, and the knifings and shootings, then the gangs have become nothing more than social clubs. As long as they stay that way, I'm happy."

"Your outlook is a strangely optimistic one," Savage said coolly. "My newspaper doesn't happen to believe the street rumbles have stopped. My newspaper is of the opinion that the death of those two cops may be traced directly to these 'social clubs.'"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"So what the hell do you want me to do about it? Round up every kid in the city and shake him down? So your goddamn newspaper can sell another million copies?"

"No. But we're going ahead with our own investigation. And if we crack this, it won't make the 87th Precinct look too good."

"It won't make Homicide North look too good, either. And it won't make the Police Commissioner look good. It'll make everybody in the department look like amateurs as contrasted with the super-sleuths of your newspaper."

"Yes, it might," Savage agreed.

"I have a few words of advice for you, Savage."

"Yes?"

"The kids around here don't like questions asked. You're not dealing with Snob Hill teen-agers who tie on a doozy by drinking a few cans of beer. You're dealing with kids whose code is entirely different from yours or mine. Don't get yourself killed."

"I won't," Savage said, smiling resplendently.

"And one other thing."

"Yes?"

"Don't foul up my precinct. I got enough headaches without you and your half-assed reporters stirring up more trouble."

"What's more important to you, Lieutenant?" Savage

asked. "My not fouling up your precinct—or my not getting killed?"

Byrnes smiled and then began filling his pipe. "They both amount to about the same thing," he said.

The call from Danny Gimp came in fifty minutes. The desk Sergeant took the call, and then plugged it in to Carella's line.

"87th Detective Squad," he said. "Carella here."

"Danny Gimp."

"Hello, Danny, what've you got?"

"I found Ordiz."

"Where?"

"This a favor, or business?" Danny asked.

"Business," Carella said tersely. "Where do I meet you?"

"You know Jenny's?"

"You kidding?"

"I'm serious."

"If Ordiz is a junkie, what's he doing on Whore Street?"

"He's blind in some broad's pad. You're lucky you get a few mumbles out of him."

"Whose pad?"

"That's what we meet for, Steve. No?"

"Call me 'Steve' face-to-face, and you'll lose some teeth, pal," Carella said.

"Okay, Detective Carella. You want this dope, I'll be in Jenny's in five minutes. Bring some loot."

"Is Ordiz heeled?"

"He may be."

"I'll see you," Carella said.

La Via de Putas was a street which ran North and South for a total of three blocks. The Indians probably had their name for it, and the teepees that lined the path in those rich days of beaver pelts and painted beads most likely did a thriving business even then. As the Indians retreated to their happy hunting grounds and the well-worn paths turned to paved roads, the teepees gave way to apartment buildings, and the practitioners of the world's oldest profession claimed the plush-lined cubby holes as their own. There was a time when the street was called Piazza Putana by the Italian immigrants, and The Hussy Hole by the Irish immigrants. With the Puerto Rican influx, the street had changed its language —but not its sole source of income. The Puerto Ricans referred to it as La Via de Putas. The cops called it "Whore Street." In any language, you paid your money, and you took your choice.

The gals who ran the sex emporiums called themselves Mama-this or Mama-that. Mama Theresa's was the best-known joint on the Street. Mama Carmen's was the filthiest. Mama Luz's had been raided by the cops sixteen times because of some of the things that went on behind its crumbling brick facade. The cops were not above visiting any of the various Mamas on social calls, too. The business calls included occasional raids and occasional rake-offs. The raids were interesting sometimes, but they were usually conducted by members of the Vice Squad who were unfamiliar with the working arrangements some of the 87th Precinct cops had going with the madams. Nothing can screw up a good deal like an ignorant cop.

Carella, perhaps, was an ignorant cop. Or an honest one, depending how you looked at it. He met Danny Gimp at Jenny's, which was a small cafe on the corner of Whore Street, a cafe which allegedly served old world absinthe, complete with wormwood and water to mix the stuff in. No old-world absinthe drinker had ever been fooled by Jenny's stuff, but the cafe still served as a sort of no-man's land between the respectable workaday world of the proletariat, and the sinful shaded halls of the brothels. A man could hang his hat in Jenny's, and a man could have a drink there, and a man could pretend he was on a fraternity outing there, and with the third drink, he was ready to rationalize what he was about to do. Jenny's was something necessary to the operation of the Street. Jenny's, to stretch a point, served the same purpose as the shower stall does in a honeymoon suite.

On July 26th, with the heat baking the black paint that covered the lower half of Jenny's front window—a window which had been smashed in some dozen times since the establishment was founded—Carella and Danny were not interested in the Crossing-the-Social-Barrier aspects of Jenny's bistro. They were interested in a man named Luis "Dizzy" Ordiz, who may or may not have pumped a total of six bullets into a total of two cops. Bush was out checking on the burglar named Flannagan. Carella had come down in a squad car driven by a young rookie named Kling. The squad car was parked outside now, with Kling leaning against the fender, his head erect, sweltering even in his Summer blues.

Tufts of blond hair stuck out of his lightweight hat. He was hot. He was hot as hell.

Inside, Carella was hot, too. "Where is he?" he asked Danny.

Danny rolled the ball of his thumb against the ball of his forefinger. "I haven't had a square meal in days," he said.

Carella took a ten spot from his wallet and fed it to Danny.

"He's at Mama Luz's," Danny said. "He's with a broad they call La Flamenca. She ain't so hot."

"What's he doing there?"

"He copped from a pusher a couple of hours back. Three decks of H. He stumbled over to Mama Luz with amorous intentions, but the H won the battle. Mama Luz tells me he's been dozing for the past sixty."

"And La Flamenca?"

"She's with him, probably cleaned out his wallet by this time. She's a big red-headed job with two gold teeth in the front of her mouth, damn near blind you with them teeth of hers. She's got mean hips, a big job, real big. Don't get rough with her, less she swallow you up in one gobble."

"Is he heeled?" Carella asked.

"Mama Luz don't know. She don't think so."

"Doesn't the red-head know?"

"I didn't ask the red-head," Danny said. "I don't deal with the hired help."

"Then how come you know about her hips?" Carella asked.

"Your ten spot don't buy my sex life," Danny said, smiling.

"Okay," Carella said, "thanks."

He left Danny at the table and went over to where Kling was leaning on the fender.

"Hot," Kling said.

"You want a beer, go ahead," Carella told him.

"No, I just want to go home."

"Everybody wants to go home," Carella said. "Home is where you pack your rod."

"I never understand detectives," Kling said.

"Come on, we have a visit to make," Carella said.

"Where?"

"Up the street. Mama Luz. Just point the car; it knows the way."

Kling took off his hat and ran one hand through his blond hair. "Phew," he said, and then he put on his hat and climbed in behind the wheel. "Who are we looking for?"

"Man named Dizzy Ordiz."

"Never heard of him."

"He never heard of you, either," Carella said.

"Yeah," Kling said drily, "well, I'd appreciate it if you introduced us."

"I will," Carella said, and he smiled as Kling set the car in motion.

Mama Luz was standing in the doorway when they pulled up. The kids on the sidewalk wore big grins, expecting a raid. Mama Luz smiled and said, "Hello, Detective Carella, Hot, no?"

"Hot," Carella agreed, wondering why in hell everybody and his brother commented about the weather. It was certainly obvious to anyone but a half-wit that this was a very hot day, that this was a suffocatingly hot day, that this was probably hotter than a day in Manila, or even if you thought Calcutta hotter, this was still a lot hotter heat than that.

Mama Luz was wearing a silk kimono. Mama Luz was a big fat woman with a mass of black hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head. Mama Luz used to be a welf-known prostitute, allegedly one of the best in the city, but now she was a madam and never indulged, except for friends. She was scrupulously clean, and always smelled of lilacs. Her complexion was as white as any complexion can be, more white because it rarely saw the sun. Her features were patrician, her smile was angelic. If you didn't know she ran one of the wildest brothels on the Street, you might have thought she was somebody's mother.

She wasn't.

"You come on a social call?" she asked Carella, winking.

"If I can't have you, Mama Luz," Carella said, "I don't want anybody."

Kling blinked, and then wiped the sweatband of his hat.

"For you, toro," Mama Luz said, winking again, "Mama Luz does anything. For you, Mama Luz is a young girl again."

"You've always been a young girl," Carella said, and he slapped her on the backside, and then said, "Where's Ordiz?"

"With la roja," Mama Luz said. "She has picked his eyes out by now." She shrugged. "These new girls, all they are interested in is money. In the old days . . ." Mama Luz cocked her head wistfully. "In the old days, toro, there was sometimes love, do you know? What has happened to love nowadays, eh?"

"It's all locked up in that fat heart of yours," Carella said. "Does Ordiz have a gun?"

"Do I shake down my guests?" Mama Luz said. "I don't think he has a gun, Stevie. You will not shoot up the works, will you? This has been a quiet day."

"No, I will not shoot up the works," Carella said. "Show me where he is."

Mama Luz nodded. As Kling passed her, she looked down at his fly, and then laughed uproariously when he blushed. She followed the two cops in, and then passed them and said, "This way. Upstairs."

The stairs shook beneath her. She turned her head over her shoulder, winked at Carella, and said, "I trust you behind me, Stevie."

"Gracias," Carella said.

"Don't look up my dress."

"It's a temptation, I'll admit," Carella said, and behind him he heard Kling choke back a cross between a sob and a gasp.

Mama Luz stopped on the first landing. 'The door at the end of the hall. No blood, Stevie, please. With this one, you do not need blood. He is half-dead already."

"Okay," Carella said. "Get downstairs, Mama Luz."

"And later, when the work is done," Mama Luz said suggestively, and she bumped one fleshy hip against Carella, almost knocking him off his feet She went past Kling, laughing, her laughter trailing up the stairwell.

Carella sighed and looked at Kling. "What're you gonna do, kid," he said, "I'm in love."

"I never understand detectives," Kling said.

They went down the hallway. Kling drew his service revolver when he saw Carella's was already in his hand.

"She said no shooting," he reminded Carella.

"So far, she only runs a whore house," Carella said. "Not the Police Department."

"Sure," Kling said.

Carella rapped on the door with the butt of his .38.

"Quien es?" a girl's voice asked.

"Police," Carella said. "Open up."

"Momenta," the voice said.

"She's getting dressed," Kling advised Carella.

In a few moments, the door opened. The girl standing there was a big redhead. She was not smiling, so Carella did not have the opportunity to examine the gold teeth hi the front of her mouth.

"What you want?" she asked.

"Clear out," Carella said. "We want to talk to the man in there."

"Sure," she said. She threw Carella a look intended to convey an attitude of virginity offended, and then she swiveled past him and slithered down the hallway. Kling watched her. When he turned back to the door, Carella was already in the room.

There was a bed in the room, and a night table, and a metal washbasin. The shade was drawn. The room smelled badly. A man lay on the bed in his trousers. His shoes and socks were off. His chest was bare. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. A fly buzzed around his nose.

"Open the window," Carella said to Kling. "Jesus, this place stinks."

The man on the bed stirred. He lifted his head and looked at Carella.

"Who are you?" he said.

"Your name Ordiz?" Carella asked.

"Yeah. You a cop?"

"Yes."

"What did I do wrong now?"

Kling opened the window. From the streets below came the sound of children's voices.

"Where were you Sunday night?"

"What time?"

"Close to midnight."

"I don't remember."

"You better, Ordiz. You better start remembering damn fast. You shoot up just now?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You're an H-man, Ordiz, and we know it, and we know you copped three decks a little while back. Are you stoned now, or can you read me?"

"I hear you," Ordiz said.

He passed a hand over his eyes. He owned a thin face with a hatchet nose and thick, rubbery lips. He needed a shave badly.

"Okay, talk."

"Friday night, you said?"

"I said Sunday."

"Sunday. Oh yeah. I was at a poker game."

"Where?"

"South 4th. What's the matter, you don't believe me?"

"You got witnesses?"

"Five guys in the game. You can check with any one of them."

"Give me their names."

"Sure. Louie DeScala, and his brother, John. Kid named Pete Diaz. Another kid they call Pepe. I don't know his last name."

"That's four," Carella said.

"I was the fifth."

"Where do these guys live?"

Ordiz reeled off a string of addresses.

"Okay, what about Monday night?"

"I was home."

"Anybody with you?"

"My landlady."

"What?"

"My landlady was with me. What's the matter, don't you hear good?"

"Shut up, Dizzy. What's her name?"

"Olga Fazio."

"Address?"

Ordiz gave it to him. "What am I supposed to done?" he asked.

"Nothing. You got a gun?"

"No. Listen, I been clean since I got out."

"What about those three decks?"

"I don't know where you got that garbage. Somebody's fooling you, cop."

"Sure. Get dressed, Dizzy."

"What for? I paid for the use of this pad."

"Okay, you used it already. Get dressed."

"Hey, listen, what for? I tell you I've been clean since I got out. What the hell, cop?"

"I want you at the precinct while I check these names. You mind?"

"They'll tell you I was with them, don't worry. And that junk about the three decks, Jesus, I don't know where you got that from. Hell, I ain't been near the stuff for years now."

"That's plain to see," Carella said. "Those scabs on your arm are from beri-beri or something, I guess."

"Huh?" Ordiz asked. "Get dressed."

Carella checked with the men Ordiz had named. Each of them was willing to swear that he'd been at the poker game from ten-thirty on the night of July 23rd, to four a.m. on the morning of July 24th. Ordiz' landlady reluctantly admitted she had spent the night of the 24th and the morning of the 25th in Ordiz' room. Ordiz had solid alibis for the times someone had spent killing Reardon and Foster.

When Bush came back with his report on Flannagan, the boys were right back where they'd started.

"He's got an alibi as long as the Texas panhandle," Bush said.

Carella sighed, and then took Kling down for a beer before heading over to see Teddy.

Bush cursed the heat, and then went home to his wife.

Chapter TEN

from where Savage sat at the end of the bar, he could plainly see the scripted lettering on the back of the boy's brightly colored jacket. The boy had caught his eye the moment Savage entered the bar. He'd been sitting in a booth with a dark-haired girl, and they'd both been drinking beer. Savage had seen the purple and gold jacket and then sat at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. From time to time, he'd glanced over at the couple. The boy was thin and pale, a shock of black hair crowning his head. The collar of the jacket was turned up, and Savage could not see the lettering across the back at first because the boy sat with his back tight against the padded cushioning of the booth.

The girl finished her beer and left, but the boy did not vacate the booth. He turned slightly, and that was when Savage saw the lettering, and that was when the insistent idea at the back of his mind began to take full shape and form.

The lettering on the jacket read: The Grovers.

The name had undoubtedly been taken from the name of the park that hemmed in the 87th Precinct, but it was a name that rang a bell in Savage's head, and it didn't take long for that bell to begin echoing and re-echoing. The Grovers had been responsible for a good many of the street rumbles in the area, including an almost titanic struggle in one section of the park, a struggle featuring knives, broken bottles, guns, and sawed-off stickball bats. The Grovers had made their peace with the cops, or so the story went, but the persistent idea that one of the gangs was responsible for the deaths of Reardon and Foster would not leave Savage's mind.

And here was a Grover.

Here was a boy to talk to.

Savage finished his gin and tonic, left his stool, and walked over to where the boy was sitting alone in the booth.

"Hi," he said.

The boy did not move his head. He raised only his eyes. He said nothing.

"Mind if I sit down?" Savage asked.

"Beat it, mister," the boy said.

Savage reached into his jacket pocket. The boy watched him silently. He took out a package of cigarettes, offered one to the boy and, facing the silent refusal, hung one on his own lip.

"My name's Savage," he said.

"Who cares?" the boy answered.

"I'd like to talk to you."

"Yeah? What about?"

"The Grovers."

"Mister, you don't live around here, do you?"

"No."

"Then, Dad, go home."

"I told you. I want to talk."

"I don't. I'm waitin' for a deb. Take off while you still got legs."

"I'm not scared of you, kid, so knock off the rough talk."

The boy appraised Savage coolly.

"What's your name?" Savage asked.

"Guess, Blondie."

"You want a beer?"

"You buying?"

"Sure," Savage said.

"Then make it a rum-coke." -

Savage turned toward the bar. "Rum-coke," he called, "and another gin and tonic."

"You drink gin, huh?" the boy said. "Yes. What's your name, son?"

"Rafael," the boy said, still studying Savage closely. "The guys call me Rip."

"Rip. That's a good name."

"Good as any. What's the matter, you don't like it?" "I like it," Savage sard. "You a nab?" "A what?" "A cop." "No."

"What then?" "I'm a reporter." "Yeah?" "Yes."

"So whattya want from me?" "I only want to talk." "What about?" "Your gang."

"What gang?" Rip said. "I don't belong to no gang." The waiter brought the drinks. Rip tasted his and said, "That bartender's a crook. He cuts the juice here. This tastes like cream soda." "Here's luck," Savage said. "You're gonna need it," Rip replied. "About the Grovers ..." "The Grovers are a club." "Not a gang?"

"Whatta we need a gang for? We're a club, that's all." "Who's president?" Savage asked.

'That's for me to know and you to find out," Rip answered.

"What's the matter? You ashamed of the club?" "Hell, no."

"Don't you want to see it publicized in a newspaper? There isn't another club in the neighborhood that ever got a newspaper's full treatment."

"We don't need no treatment. We got a big rep as it is. Ain't nobody in this city who ain't heard of The Grovers. Who you tryin' to snow, mister?"

"Nobody. I just thought you'd like some public relations work."

"What the hell's that?"

"A favorable press."

"You mean . . ." Rip furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"An article telling about your club."

"We don't need no articles. You better cut out, Dad."

"Rip, I'm trying to be your friend."

"I got plenty friends in The Grovers."

"How many?"

"There must be at least . . ." Rip stopped short. "You're a wise bastard, ain't you?"

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Rip. Why do the boys call you 'Rip'?"

"We all got nicknames. That's mine."

"But why?"

"Because I can handle a blade good."

"Did you ever have to?"

"Handle one? You kidding? In this neighborhood, you don't carry a knife or a piece, you're dead. Dead, man."

"What's a piece, Rip?"

"A gun." Rip opened his eyes wide. "You don't know what a piece is? Man, you ain't been."

"Do The Grovers have many pieces?"

"Enough."

"What kind?"

"All kinds. What do you want? We got it."

".45's?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Nice gun, a .45."

"Yeah, it's big," Rip said.

"Do you ever use these pieces?"

"You got to use them. Man, you think these diddlebops are for fun? You got to use whatever you can get your hands on. Otherwise, you wind up with a tag on your toe." Rip drank a little more of the rum. "This neighborhood ain't a cream puff, Dad. You got to watch yourself all the time. That's why it helps to belong to The Gravers. They see this jacket comin' down the street, they got respect. They know if they mess with me, they got all The Grovers to mess with."

"The police, you mean?"

"Naw, who wants Law trouble? We steer away from them. Unless they bother us." "Any cops bother you lately?"

"We got a thing on with the cops. They don't bother us, we don't bother them. Man, there ain't been a rumble in months. Things are very quiet" "You like it that way?"

"Sure, why not? Who wants his skull busted? The Grovers want peace. We never punk out, but we never go lookin' for trouble, either. Only time we get involved is when we're challenged, or when a stud from another club tries to make it with one of our debs. We don't go for that kind of crap." "So you've had no trouble with the police lately?" "Few little skirmishes. Nothing to speak of." "What kind of skirmishes?"

"Agh, one of the guys was on mootah. So he got a little high, you know. So he busted a store window, for kicks, you know? So one of the cops put the arm on him. He got a suspended sentence."

"Who put the arm on him?" "Why you want to know?" "I'm just curious."

"One of the bulls, I don't remember who." "A detective?" "I said a bull, didn't I?"

"How'd the rest of The Grovers feel about this?" "How do you mean?"

"About this detective pulling in one of your boys?" "Agh, the kid was a Junior, didn't know his ass from his elbow. Nobody shoulda given him a reefer to begin with. You don't handle a reefer right. . . well, you know, the guy was just a kid."

"And you felt no resentment for the cop who'd pulled him in?"

"Huh?"

"You had nothing against the cop who pulled him in?"

Rip's eyes grew suddenly wary. "What're you drivin' at, mister?"

"Nothing, really."

"What'd you say your name was?"

"Savage."

"Why you askin' about how we feel about cops?"

"No reason."

"Then why you askin'?"

"I was just curious."

"Yeah," Rip said flatly. "Well, I got to go now. I guess that deb ain't comin' back."

"Listen, stick around a while," Savage said. "I'd like to talk some more."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, I would."

"That's tough, pal," Rip said. "I wouldn't." He got out of the booth. "Thanks for the drink. I see you around."

"Sure," Savage said.

He watched the boy's shuffling walk as he moved out of the bar. The door closed behind him, and he was gone.

Savage studied his drink. There had been trouble between The Grovers and a cop—a detective, in fact. So his theory was not quite as far-fetched as the good lieutenant tried to make it.

He sipped at his drink, thinking, and when he'd finished it, he ordered another. He walked out of the bar about ten minutes later, passing two neatly dressed men on his way out.

The two men were Steve Carella and a patrolman in street clothes—a patrolman named Bert Kling.

Chapter ELEVEN

bush was limp when he reached the apartment.

He hated difficult cases, but only because he felt curiously inadequate to cope with them. He had not been joking when he told Carella he felt detectives weren't particularly brilliant men. He thoroughly believed this, and whenever a difficult case popped up, his faith in his own theory was reaffirmed.

Legwork and stubbornness, that was all it amounted to.

So far, the legwork they'd done had brought them no closer to the killer than they originally were. The stubbornness? Well, that was another thing again. They would keep at it, of course. Until the break came. When would the break come? Today? Tomorrow? Never?

The hell with the case, he thought. I'm home. A man is entitled to the luxury of leaving his goddamn job at the office. A man is entitled to a few peaceful hours with his wife.

He pushed his key into the lock, twisted it, and then threw the door open.

"Hank?" Alice called.

"Yes." Her voice sounded cool. Alice always sounded cool. Alice was a remarkable woman.

"Do you want a drink?"

"Yes. Where are you?"

"In the bedroom. Come on in, there's a nice breeze here."

"A breeze? You're kidding."

"No, seriously."

He took off his jacket and threw it over the back of a chair. He was pulling off his shirt as he went into the bedroom. Bush never wore undershirts. He did not believe in the theory of sweat absorption. An undershirt, he held, was simply an additional piece of wearing apparel, and hi this weather the idea was to get as close to the nude as possible. He ripped off his shirt with almost savage intensity. He had a broad chest matted with curling red hair that matched the thatch on his head. The knife scar ran its crooked path down his right arm.

Alice lay in a chaise near the open window. She wore a white blouse and a straight black skirt. She was barefoot, and her legs were propped up on the window sill, and the black skirt rustled mildly with the faint breeze that came through the window. She had drawn her blond hair back into a pony tail. He went to her, and she lifted her face for his kiss, and he noticed the thin film of perspiration on her upper lip.

"Where's that drink?" he asked.

"I'll mix it," she said. She swung her feet off the window sill, and the skirt pulled back for an instant, her thigh winking at him. He watched her silently, wondering what it was about this woman that was so exciting, wondering if all married men felt this way about their wives even after ten years of marriage.

"Get that gleam out of your eyes," she said, reading his face.

"Why?"

"It's too damn hot."

"I know a fellow who claims the best way..."

"I know about that fellow."

"Is in a locked room on the hottest day of the year with the windows closed under four blankets."

"Gin and tonic?"

"Good."

"I heard that vodka and tonic is better."

"We'll have to get some."

"Busy day at the mine?"

"Yes. You?"

"Sat around and worried about you," Alice said.

"I see all those grey hairs sprouting."

"He belittles my concern," Alice said to the air. "Did you find that killer yet?"

"No."

"Do you want a lime in this?"

"If you like."

"Means going into the kitchen. Be a doll and drink it this way."

"I'm a doll," Bush said.

She handed him the drink. Bush sat on the edge of the bed. He sipped at the drink, and then leaned forward, the glass dangling at the ends of his long muscular arms.

"Tired?"

"Pooped."

"You don't look very tired."

"I'm so pooped, I'm peeped."

"You always say that," Alice said. "I wish you wouldn't always say that. There are things you always say."

"Like what?"

"Well, like that, for one."

"Name another."

"When we're driving in the car and there are fixed traffic signals. Whenever you begin hitting the lights right, you say 'We're in with the boys'."

"So what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, the first hundred times."

"Oh, hell."

"Well, it's true."

"All right, all right. I'm not peeped. I'm not even pooped."

"I'm hot," Alice said. "So am I."

She began unbuttoning her blouse, and even before he looked up, she said, "Don't get ideas."

She took off the blouse and draped it over the back of the chaise. She owned large breasts, and they were crowded into a filmy white brassiere. The front slope of the cups was covered with a sheer nylon inset, and he could see the insistent pucker of her nipples. It reminded him of pictures he had seen in National Geographic at the dentist's office, the time he'd had that periodontal work done. The girls on Bali. Nobody had breasts like the girls on Bali. Except maybe Alice.

"What'd you do all day?" he asked.

"Nothing much."

"Were you in?"

"Most of the time."

"So what'd you do?"

"Sat around, mostly."

"Mmmm." He could not take his eyes from the brassiere. "Did you miss me?"

"I always miss you," she said flatly.

"I missed you."

"Drink your drink."

"No, really."

"Well, good," she said, and she smiled fleetingly. He studied the smile. It was gone almost instantly, and he had the peculiar feeling that it had been nothing more than a duty smile.

"Why don't you get some sleep?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said, watching her.

"Hank, if you think ..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"I've got to go in again later," he said.

"They're really pushing on this one, aren't they?"

"Lots of pressure," he said. "I think the Old Man is scared he's next."

"I'll bet it's all over," Alice said. "I don't think there'll be another killing."

"You can never tell," Bush said.

"Do you want something to eat before you turn in?" she asked.

"I'm not turning in yet."

Alice sighed. "You can't escape this damn heat," she said. "No matter what you do, it's always with you." Her hand went to the button at the side of her skirt. She undid it, and then pulled down the zipper. The skirt slid to her feet, and she stepped out of it. She was wearing white nylon panties frilled with a gossamer web of puffed nylon at each leg. She walked to the window, and he watched her. Her legs were long and clean.

"Come here," he said.

"No. I don't want to, Hank."

"All right," he said.

"Do you think it'll cool off tonight?"

"I doubt it." He watched her "closely. He had the distinct impression that she was undressing for him, and yet she'd said ... He tweaked his nose, puzzled.

She turned from the window. Her skin was very white against the white of her underwear. Her breasts bulged over the edges of the inadequate bra. "You need a haircut," she said.

"I'll try to get one tomorrow. We haven't had a minute."

"Oh, goddamn this heat, anyway," she said, and she reached behind her to unclasp the bra. He watched her breasts spill free, watched as she tossed the bra across the room. She walked to mix herself another drink, and he could not take his eyes from her. What's she trying to do? he wondered. What the hell is she trying to do to me?

He rose swiftly, walking to where she stood. He put his arms around her, and his hands cupped her breasts.

"Don't," she said.

"Baby..."

"Don't." Her voice was firm, a cold edge to it.

"Why not?"

"Because I say so."

"Well, then why the hell are you parading around like . . ."

"Take your hands off me, Hank. Let me go."

"Aw, baby..."

She broke away from him. "Get some sleep," she said. "You're tired." There was something strange in her eyes, an almost malicious gleam.

"Can't..."

"No."

"For Christ's sake, Alice..."

"No!"

"All right."

She smiled quickly. "All right," she repeated.

"Well . . ." Bush paused. "I'd ... I'd better get to bed."

"Yes. You'd better."

"What I can't understand is why..."

"You won't even need a sheet in this weather," Alice interrupted.

"No, I guess not."

He went to the bed and took off his shoes and socks. He didn't want to undress because he didn't want to give her the satisfaction, now that he'd been denied, of knowing how she'd affected him. He took off his trousers and quickly got into the bed, pulling the sheet to his throat.

Alice watched him, smiling. "I'm reading Anapurna," she said.

"So?"

"I just happened to think of it."

Bush rolled over onto his side.

"I'm still hot," Alice said. "I think I'll take a shower. And then maybe I'll catch an air-conditioned movie. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," Bush mumbled.

She walked to the side of the bed and stood there for a moment, looking down at him. "Yes, I think I'll take a shower." Her hands went to her hips. Slowly, she rolled the panties down over the flatness of her stomach, past the hard jut of her crotch, over the whiteness of her thighs. The panties dropped to the floor, and she stepped out of them and stood by the bed looking down at Bush smiling.

He did not move. He kept his eyes on the floor, but he could see her feet and her legs, but he did not move.

"Sleep tight, darling," she whispered, and then she went into the bathroom.

He heard the shower when it began running. He lay on the soggy sheet and listened to the steady machine-gunning of the water. Then, over the sound of the shower, came the sound of the telephone, splitting the silence of the room.

He sat up and reached for the instrument.

"Hello?"

"Bush?"

"Yes?"

"This is Havilland. You better get down here right away."

"What's the matter?" Bush asked.

"You know that young rookie Kling?"

"Yeah?"

"He was just shot in a bar on Culver."

Chapter TWELVE

the squad room of the 87th resembled nothing so much as the locker room of the Boys' Club when Bush arrived. There must have been at least two dozen teen-agers crammed in behind the dividing rail and the desks beyond it. Add to this a dozen or so detectives who were firing questions, the answers to which were coming in two languages, and the bedlam was equivalent to the hush of a hydrogen bomb explosion.

The boys were all wearing brilliantly contrasting purple and gold jackets, and the words "The Grovers" decorated the back of each jacket. Bush, looked for Carella in the crowded room, spotted him, and walked over toward him quickly. Havilland, a tough cop with a cherubic face, shouted at one of the boys, "Don't give me any guff, you little punk, or I'll break your goddamn arm."

"You try it, dick," the kid answered, and Havilland cuffed him across the mouth. The boy staggered back, slamming into Bush as he went by. Bush shrugged his shoulders, and the boy flew back into Havilland's arms, as if he'd been brushed aside by a rhinoceros.

Carella was talking to two boys when Bush approached him.

"Who fired the gun?" he asked.

The boys shrugged.

"We'll throw you all in jail as accessories," Carella promised.

"What the hell happened?" Bush wanted to know.

"I was having a beer with Kling. Nice, peaceful off-duty beer. I left him there, and ten minutes later, when he's leaving the joint, he gets jumped by these punks. One of them put a slug in him."

"How is he?"

"He's at the hospital. The slug was a .22, went through his right shoulder. We figure a zip gun."

"You think this ties with the other kills?"

"I doubt it. The m.o.'s 'way off."

"Then why?"

"How the hell do I know? Looks like the whole city figures it's open season on cops." Carella turned back to the boys. "Were you with the gang when the cop was jumped?"

The boys would not answer.

"Okay, fellas," Carella said, "play it smart. See what that gets you. See how long The Grovers are gonna last under a rap like this one."

"We din' shoot no cop," one of the boys said.

"No? What happened, he shoot himself?"

"You ting we crazy?" the other boy said. "Shoot a bull?"

"This was a patrolman," Carella said, "not a detective."

"He wass wear a suit," the first boy said.

"Cops wear suits off-duty," Bush said. "Now how about it?"

"Nobody shoot a cop," the first boy said.

"No, except somebody did."

Lieutenant Byrnes came out of his office and shouted, "All right, knock it off! KNOCK IT OFF!"

The room fell immediately silent.

"Who's your talk man?" Byrnes asked.

"I am," a tall boy answered.

"What's your name?"

"Do-Do."

"What's your full name?"

"Salvador Jesus Santez."

"All right, come here, Salvador."

"The guys call me Do-Do."

"Okay, come here."

Santez walked over to where Byrnes was standing. He walked with a shuffle which was considered both hip and cool. The boys in the room visibly relaxed. This was their talk man, and Do-Do was a real gone stud. Do-Do would know how to handle this jive.

"What happened?" Byrnes asked.

"Little skirmish, that's all," Santez said.

"Why?"

"Jus' like that. We got the word passed down, so we joined the fray."

"What word?"

"You know, like a scout was out."

"No, I don't know. What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look, Dad . . ." Santez started.

"You call me 'Dad' again," Byrnes warned, "and I'll beat you black and blue."

"Well, gee, Da . . ." Santez stopped dead. "What you want to know?"

"I want to know why you jumped a cop."

"What cop? What're you talkin' about?"

"Look, Santez, don't play this too goddamn cute. You jumped one of our patrolmen as he came out of a bar. You beat him up, and one of your boys put a bullet in his shoulder. Now what the hell's the story?"

Santez considered Byrnes' question gravely.