Cop Hater

"Well?"

"He's a cop?"

"What the hell did you think he was?"

"He was wearing a light blue summer suit!" Santez said, his eyes opening wide.

"What the hell's that got to do with it? Why'd you jump him? Why'd you shoot him?"

A mumbling was starting behind Santez. Byrnes heard the mumble and shouted, "Shut up! You've got your talk man, let him talk!"

Santez was still silent.

"What about it, Santez?"

"A mistake," Santez said.

"That's for damn sure."

"I mean, we didn't know he was a cop."

"Why'd you jump him?"

"A mistake, I tell you."

"Start from the beginning."

"Okay," Santez said. "We been giving you trouble lately?"

"No."

"Okay. We been minding our own business, right? You never hear from The Grovers, except when we protectin' our own, right? The last rumble you get is over there in The Silver Culvers' territory when they pick on one of our Juniors. Am I right?"

"Go ahead, Santez."

"Okay. Early today, there's a guy snooping around. He grabs one of our Seniors in a bar, and he starts pumpin' him."

"Which Senior?"

"I forget," Santez said.

"Who was the guy?"

"Said he was from a newspaper."

"What?"

"Yeah. Said his name was Savage, you know him?"

"I know him," Byrnes said tightly.

"Okay, so he starts askin' like how many pieces we got, and whether we got .45's, and whether we don't like the Law, things like that. This Senior, he's real hip. He tips right off this guy is trying to mix in The Grovers with the two bulls got knocked off around here. So he's on a newspaper, and we got a rep to protect. We don't want Law trouble. If this jerk goes back to his paper and starts printing lies about how we're mixed in, that ain't good for our rep."

"So what'd you do, Santez?" Byrnes asked wearily, thinking of Savage, and thinking of how he'd like to wring the reporter's neck.

"So this Senior comes back, and we planned to scare off the reporter before he goes printing any crap. We went back to the bar and waited for him. When he come out, we jumped him. Only he pulled a gun, so one of the boys plugged him in self-defense."

"Who?"

"Who knows?" Santez said. "One of the boys burned him."

"Thinking he was Savage."

"Sure. How the hell we supposed to know he's a cop instead? He had on a light blue suit, and he had blond hair, like this reporter creep. So we burned him. It was a mistake."

"You keep saying that, Santez, but I don't think you know just how big a mistake it was. Who fired that shot?"

Santez shrugged.

"Who was the Senior Savage talked to?"

Santez shrugged.

"Is he here?"

Santez had stopped talking, it seemed.

"You know we've got a list of every damn member in your gang, don't you, Santez?"

"Sure.

"Okay. Havilland, get the list. I want a roll call. Who-ever's not here, pick him up."

"Hey, wait a minute," Santez said. "I told you it was all a mistake. You going to get somebody in trouble just 'cause we mistake a cop?"

"Listen to me, Santez, and listen hard. Your gang hasn't been in any trouble recently, and that's fine with us. Call it a truce, call it whatever you want to. But don't ever think, and I mean ever, Santez, that you or your boys can shoot anybody in this goddamn precinct and get away with it. You're a bunch of hoods as far as I'm concerned, Santez. You're a bunch of hoods with fancy jackets, and a seventeen year old hood is no less dangerous than a fifty year old hood. The only reason we haven't been bearing down on you is because you've been behaving yourself. All right, today you stopped behaving yourself. You shot a man in my precinct territory —and that means you're in trouble. That means you're in big trouble."

Santez blinked.

"Put them all downstairs and call the roll there," Byrnes said. "Then get whoever we missed."

"All right, let's go," Havilland said. He began herding the boys out of the room.

Miscolo, one of the patrolmen from Clerical, pushed his way through the crowd and walked over to the lieutenant.

"Lieutenant, fella outside wants to see you," he said.

"Who?"

"Guy named Savage. Claims he's a reporter. Wants to know what the rumble was about this aft..."

"Kick him down the steps," Byrnes said, and he went back into his office.

Chapter THIRTEEN

homicide, if it doesn't happen too close to home, is a fairly interesting thing.

You can really get involved in the investigation of a homicide case because it is the rare occurrence in the everyday life of a precinct. It is the most exotic crime because it deals with the theft of something universal—a man's life.

Unfortunately, there are other less interesting and more mundane matters to deal with in a precinct, too. And in a precinct like the 87th, these mundane matters can consume a lot of time. There are the rapes, and the muggings, and the rollings, and the knifings, and the various types of disorderly conducts, and the breakings and entries, and the burglaries, and the car thefts, and the street rumbles, and the cats caught in sewers, and oh, like that. Many of these choice items of crime are promptly turned over to special squads within the department, but the initial squeal nonetheless goes to the precinct in which the crime is being committed, and these squeals can keep a man hopping.

It's not so easy to hop when the temperature is high.

For cops, shocking as the notion may sound at first, are human beings. They sweat like you and me, and they don't like to work when it's hot. Some of them don't like to work even when it's cool. None of them like to draw Lineup, especially when it's hot.

Steve Carella and Hank Bush drew Lineup on Thursday, July 27th.

They were especially displeased about it because Lineup is held only from Mondays to Thursdays, and if they had missed it this Thursday, chances were they would not pull the duty until the following week and perhaps—just perhaps —the heat would have broken by then.

The morning started the way most mornings were starting that week. There was a deceptive coolness at first, a coolness which—despite the prognostications of television's various weather men and weather women—seemed to promise a delightful day ahead. The delusions and flights of fancy fled almost instantly. It was apparent within a half-hour of being awake that this was going to be another scorcher, that you would meet people who asked, "Hot enough for you?" or who blandly and informatively remarked, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity."

Whatever it was, it was hot.

It was hot where Carella lived in the suburb of Riverhead, and it was hot hi the heart of the city—on High Street, where Headquarters and the lineup awaited.

Since Bush lived in another suburb—Calm's Point, west and a little south of Riverhead—they chose to meet at Headquarters at 8:45, fifteen minutes before the lineup began. Carella was there on the dot.

At 8:50, Bush strolled up. That is to say, he more or less crawled onto the pavement and slouched over to where Carella was standing and puffing on a cigarette.

"Now I know what Hell is like," he said.

"Wait until the sun really starts shining," Carella said.

"You cheerful guys are always good for an early-morning laugh," Bush answered. "Let me have a cigarette, will you?"

Carella glanced at his watch. "Time we were up there."

"Let it wait. We've got a few minutes yet." He took the cigarette Carella offered, lighted it, and blew out a stream of smoke. "Any new corpses today?"

"None yet."

"Pity. I'm getting so I miss my morning coffee and corpse."

"The city," Carella said.

"What?"

"Look at it. What a goddamn monster."

"A hairy bastard," Bush agreed.

"But I love her."

"Yeah," Bush said noncommittally.

"It's too hot to work today. This is a day for the beach."

"The beaches'll be jammed. You're lucky you've got a nice lineup to attend."

"Sure, I know. Who wants a cool, sandy beach with the breakers rolling in and ..."

"You Chinese?"

"Huh?"

"You know your torture pretty good."

"Let's go upstairs."

They flipped their cigarettes away and entered the Headquarters building. The building had once boasted clean red brick and architecture which was modern. The brick was now covered with the soot of five decades, and the architecture was as modern as a chastity belt.

They walked into the first-floor marbled entryway, past the dick squad room, past the lab, past the various records rooms. Down a shaded hallway, a frosted glass door announced "Commissioner of Police."

"I'll bet he's at the beach," Carella said.

"He's in there hiding behind his desk," Bush said. "He's afraid the 87th's maniac is going to get him next."

"Maybe he's not at the beach," Carella amended. "I understand this building has a swimming pool in the basement."

"Two of them," Bush said. He rang for the elevator. They waited in hot, suffering silence for several moments. The elevator doors slid open. The patrolman inside was sweating.

"Step into the iron coffin," he said.

Carella grinned. Bush winced. Together they got into the car.

"Lineup?" the patrolman asked. "No, the swimming pool," Bush cracked. "Jokes I can't take in this heat," the patrolman said. "Then don't supply straight lines," Bush said. "Abbott and Costello I've got with me," the patrolman said, and then he lapsed into silence. The elevator crawled up the intestinal tract of the building. It creaked. It whined. Its walls were moist with the beaded exhalations of its occupants.

"Nine," the patrolman said.

The doors slid open. Carella and Bush stepped into a sunlit corridor. Simultaneously, they reached for the leather cases to which their shields were pinned. Again simultaneously, they pinned the tin to their collars and then walked toward the desk behind which another patrolman was seated. The patrolman eyed the tin, nodded, and they passed the desk and walked into a large room which served many purposes at Headquarters. The room was built with the physical proportions of a gymnasium, and did indeed have two basketball hoops, one at each end of the room. The windows were wide and tall, covered with steel mesh. The room was used for indoor sport, lectures, swearing in of rookies, occasional meetings of the Police Benevolent Association or the Police Honor Legion and, of course, the lineups.

For the purpose of these Monday-to-Thursday parades of felony offenders, a permanent stage had been set up at the far end of the room, beneath the balcony there, and beyond the basketball hoop. The stage was brilliantly lighted. Behind the stage was a white wall, and upon the wall in black numerals was the graduated height scale against which the prisoners stood.

In front of the stage, and stretching back towards the entrance doorways for about ten rows, was an array of folding chairs, most of which were occupied by detectives from all over the city when Bush and Carella entered. The blinds at the windows had already been drawn, and a look at the raised dais and speaking stand behind the chairs showed that the Chief of Detectives was already in position and the strawberry festival would start in a few moments. To the left of the stage, the felony offenders huddled in a group, lightly guarded by several patrolmen and several detectives, the men who had made the arrests. Every felony offender who'd been picked up in the city the day before would be paraded across the stage this morning.

The purpose of the lineup, you see—despite popular misconception about the identification of suspects by victims, a practice which was more helpful in theory than in actual usage—was simply to acquaint as many detectives as possible with the men who were doing evil in their city. The ideal setup would have been to have each detective in each precinct at each scheduled lineup, but other pressing matters made this impossible. So two men were chosen each day from each precinct, on the theory that if you can't acquaint all of the people all of the time, you can at least acquaint some of them some of the time.

"All right," the Chief of Detectives said into his microphone, "let's start."

Carella and Bush took seats in the fifth row as the first two offenders walked onto the stage. It was the practice to show the offenders as they'd been picked up, in pairs, in a trio, a quartet, whatever. This simply for the purpose of establishing an m.o. If a crook works in a pair once, he will generally work in a pair again.

The police stenographer poised his pen above his pad. The Chief of Detectives intoned, "Diamondback, One," calling off the area of the city in which the arrest had been made, and the number of the case from that area that day. "Diamondback, One. Anselmo, Joseph, 17, and Di Palermo, Frederick, 16, Forced the door of an apartment on Cambridge and Gribble. Occupant screamed for help, bringing patrolman to scene. No statement. How about it, Joe?"

Joseph Anselmo was a tall, thin boy with dark black hair and dark brown eyes. The eyes seemed darker than they were because they were set against a pale, white face. The whiteness was attributable to one emotion, and one emotion alone. Joseph Anselmo was scared.

"How about it, Joe?" the Chief of Detectives asked again.

"What do you want to know?" Anselmo said.

"Did you force the door to that apartment?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you forced a door, you must have had a reason for doing it. Did you know somebody was in the apartment?"

"No."

"Did you force it alone?"

Anselmo did not answer.

"How about it, Freddie. Were you with Joe when you broke that lock?"

Frederick Di Palermo was blond and blue-eyed. He was shorter than Anselmo, and he looked cleaner. He shared two things in common with his friend. First, he had been picked up on a felony offense. Second, he was scared. "I was with him," Di Palermo said. "How'd you force the door?" "We hit the lock." "What with?" "A hammer."

"Weren't you afraid it would make noise?" "We only give it a quick rap," Di Palermo said. "We didn't know somebody was home."

"What'd you expect to get in that apartment?" the Chief of Detectives asked.

"I don't know," Di Palermo said.

"Now, look," the Chief of Detectives said patiently, "you both broke into an apartment. Now we know that, and you just admitted it, so you must have had a reason for going in there. What do you say?"

"The girls told us," Anselmo said. "What girls?"

"Oh, some chicks," Di Palermo answered. "What'd they tell you?" "To bust the door." "Why?"

"Like that," Anselmo said. "Like what?" "Like for kicks." "Only for kicks?"

"I don't know why we busted the door," Anselmo said, and he glanced quickly at Di Palermo.

"To take something out of the apartment?" the Chief asked.

"Maybe a ..." Di Palermo shrugged. "Maybe what?"

"A couple of bucks. You know, like that." "You were planning a burglary then, is that right?" "Yeah, I guess."

"What'd you do when you discovered the apartment was occupied?"

"The lady screamed," Anselmo said.

"So we run," Di Palermo said.

"Next case," the Chief of Detectives said. The boys shuffled oft the stage to where their arresting officer was waiting for them. Actually, they had said a hell of a lot more than they should have. They'd have been within their rights if they'd insisted on not saying a word at the lineup. Not knowing this, not even knowing that their position was fortified because they'd made no statement when they'd been collared, they had answered the Chief of Detectives with remarkable naivete. A good lawyer, with a simple charge of unlawfully entering under circumstances or in a manner not amounting to a burglary, would have had his clients plead guilty to a misdemeanor. The Chief of Detectives, however, had asked the boys if they were planning to commit a burglary, and the boys had answered in the affirmative. And the Penal Law, Section 402, defines Burglary in first degree thusly:

A person, who, with intent to commit some crime therein, breaks and enters, in the night time, the dwelling-house of another, in which there is at the time a human being:

1. Being armed with a dangerous weapon; or

2. Arming himself therein with such a weapon; or

3. Being assisted by a confederate actually present; or ...

Well, no matter. The boys had very carelessly tied the knot of a felony about their youthful necks, perhaps not realizing that burglary in the first degree is punishable by imprisonment in a state prison for an indeterminate term the minimum of which shall not be less than ten years and the maximum of which shall not be more than thirty years.

Apparently, "the girls" had told them wrong.

"Diamondback, Two," the Chief of Detectives said. "Pritchett, Virginia, 34. Struck her quote husband unquote about the neck and head with a hatchet at three a.m. in the morning. No statement."

Virginia Pritchett had walked onto the stage while the Chief of Detectives was talking. She was a small woman, barely clearing the five-foot-one-inch marker. She was thin, narrow-boned, with red hair of the fine, spider-webby type. She wore no lipstick. She wore no smile. Her eyes were dead.

"Virginia?" the Chief of Detectives said.

She raised her head. She kept her hands close to her waist, one fist folded over the other. Her eyes did not come to life. They were grey, and she stared into the glaring lights unblinkingly. "Virginia?"

"Yes, sir?" Her voice was very soft, barely audible. Ca-rella leaned forward to catch what she was saying.

"Have you ever been in trouble before, Virginia?" the Chief of Detectives asked. "No, sir."

"What happened, Virginia?"

The girl shrugged, as if she too could not comprehend what had happened. The shrug was a small one, a gesture that would have been similar to passing a hand over the eyes.

"What happened, Virginia?"

The girl raised herself up to her full height, partly to speak into the permanently fixed microphone which dangled several inches before her face on a solid steel pipe, partly because there were eyes on her and because she apparently realized her shoulders were slumped. The room was deathly still. There was not a breeze in the city. Beyond the glaring lights, the detectives sat.

"We argued," she said, sighing. "Do you want to tell us about it?"

"We argued from the morning, from when we first got up. The heat. It's ... it was very hot in the apartment. Right from the morning. You . . . you lose your temper quickly in the heat." "Go on."

"He started with the orange juice. He said the orange juice wasn't cold enough. I told him I'd had it in the ice box all night, it wasn't my fault it wasn't cold. Diamondback isn't ritzy, sir. We don't have refrigerators in Diamondback, and with this heat, the ice melts very fast. Well, he started complaining about the orange juice." "Were you married to this man?" "No, sir."

"How long have you been living together?" "Seven years, sir." "Go on."

"He said he was going down for breakfast, and I said he shouldn't go down because it was silly to spend money when you didn't have to. He stayed, but he complained about the orange juice all the while he ate. It went on like that all day."

"About the orange juice, you mean?"

"No, other things. I don't remember what. He was watching the ball game on tv, and drinking beer, and he'd pick on little things all day long. He was sitting in his under-shorts because of the heat. I had hardly anything on myself."

"Go on."

"We had supper late, just cold cuts. He was picking on me all that time. He didn't want to sleep in the bedroom that night, he wanted to sleep on the kitchen floor. I told him it was silly, even though the bedroom is very hot. He hit me."

"What do you mean, he hit you?"

"He hit me about the face. He closed one eye for me. I told him not to touch me again, or I would push him out the window. He laughed. He put a blanket on the kitchen floor, near the window, and he turned on the radio, and I went into the bedroom to sleep."

"Yes, go ahead, Virginia."

"I couldn't sleep because it was so hot. And he had the radio up loud. I went into the kitchen to tell him to please put the radio a little lower, and he said to go back to bed. I went into the bathroom, and I washed my face, and that was when I spied the hatchet."

"Where was the hatchet?"

"He keeps tools on a shelf in the bathroom, wrenches and a hammer, and the hatchet was with them. I thought I would go out and tell him to put the radio lower again, because it was very hot and the radio was very loud, and I wanted to try to get some sleep. But I didn't want him to hit me again, so I took the hatchet, to protect myself with, in case he tried to get rough again."

"Then what did you do?"

"I went out into the kitchen with the hatchet in my hands. He had got up off the floor and was sitting in a chair near the window, listening to the radio. His back was to me."

"Yes."

"I walked over to him, and he didn't turn around, and I didn't say anything to him."

"What did you do?"

"I struck him with the hatchet."

"Where?"

"On his head and on his neck."

"How many times?"

"I don't remember exactly. I just kept hitting him."

"Then what?"

"He fell off the chair, and I dropped the hatchet, and I went next door to Mr. Alanos, he's our neighbor, and I told him I had hit my husband with a hatchet, and he didn't believe me. He came into the apartment, and then he called the police, and an officer came."

"Your husband was taken to the hospital, did you know that?" "Yes."

"Do you know the disposition of his case?" Her voice was very low. "I heard he died," she said. She lowered her head and did not look out past the lights again. Her fists were still folded at her waist. Her eyes were still dead.

"Next case," the Chief of Detectives said. "She murdered him," Bush whispered, his voice curiously loaded with awe. Carella nodded.

"Majesta, One," the Chief of Detectives said. "Bronckin, David, 27. Had a lamp outage report at 10:24 P.M. last night, corner of Weaver and 69th North. Electric company notified at once, and then another lamp outage two blocks south reported, and then gunfire reported. Patrolman picked up Bronckin on Dicksen and 69th North. Bronckin was intoxicated, was going down the street shooting out lamppost fixtures. What about it, Dave?"

"I'm only Dave to my friends," Bronckin said.

"What about it?"

"What do you want from me? I got high, I shot out a few lights. I'll pay for the goddamn lights."

"What were you doing with the gun?"

"You know what I was doing. I was shooting at the lampposts."

"Did you start out with that idea? Shooting at the lamp-posts?"

"Yeah. Listen, I don't have to say anything to you. I want a lawyer."

"You'll have plenty opportunity for a lawyer."

"Well, I ain't answering any questions until I get one."

"Who's asking questions? We're trying to find out what possessed you to do a damn fool thing like shooting at light fixtures."

"I was high. What the hell, you never been high?"

"I don't go shooting at lampposts when I'm high," the Chief said.

"Well, I do. That's what makes horse races."

"Where were you Sunday night?" "What time Sunday night?" "About 11.40 or so." "I think I was at a movie."

"Which movie?"

"The Strand. Yeah, I was at a movie."

"Did you have the .45 with you?"

"I don't remember."

"Yes or no."

"I don't remember. If you want a yes or no, it'll have to be no. I'm no dope."

"What picture did you see?"

"An old one."

"Name it."

"The Creature from the Black Lagoon."

"What was it about?"

"A monster that comes up from the water."

"What was the co-feature?"

"I don't remember."

"Think."

"Something with John Garfield."

"What?"

"A prize-fight picture."

"What was the title?"

"I don't remember. He's a bum, and then he gets to be champ, and then he takes a dive."

"Body and Soul?"

"Yeah, that was it."

"Call The Strand, Hank," Carella said.

"Hey, what're you gonna do that for?" Bronckin asked.

"To check and see if those movies were playing Sunday night."

"They were playing, all right."

"We're also going to check that .45 with Ballistics, Bronckin."

"What for?"

"To see how it matches up against some slugs we've got. You can save us a lot of time."

"How?"

"What were you doing Monday night?"

"Monday, Monday? Jesus, who remembers?"

Bush had located the number in the directory, and was dialing.

"Listen," Bronckin said, "you don't have to call them. Those were the pictures, all right."

"What were you doing Monday night?"

"I... I went to a movie."

"Another movie? Two nights in a row?"

"Yeah. The movies are air-conditioned. It's better than hanging around and suffocating, ain't it?"

"What'd you see?"

"Some more old ones."

"You like old movies, don't you?"

"I don't care about the picture. I was only tryin' to beat the heat. The places showing old movies are cheaper."

"What were the pictures?"

"Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Violent Saturday."

"You remember those all right, do you?"

"Sure, it was more recent."

"Why'd you say you couldn't remember what you did Monday night?"

"I said that?"

"Yes."

"Well, I had to think."

"What movie house was this?"

"On Monday night, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"One of the RKO's. The one on North 80th."

Bush put the receiver back into its cradle. "Checks out, Steve," he said. "Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Body and Soul. Like he said." Bush didn't mention that he'd also taken down a timetable for the theatre, or that he knew exactly what times each picture started and ended. He nodded briefly at Carella, passing on the information.

"What time did you go in?"

"Sunday or Monday?"

"Sunday."

"About 8:30."

"Exactly 8:30?"

"Who remembers exactly? It was getting hot, so I went into The Strand."

"What makes you think it was 8:30?"

"I don't know. It was about that time."

"What time did you leave?"

"About—musta been about a quarter to twelve."

"Where'd you go then?" I

"For some coffee and."

"Where?"

"The White Tower."

"How long did you stay?"

"Half-hour, I guess."

"What'd you eat?"

"I told you. Coffee and."

"Coffee and what?"

"Jesus, a jelly donut," Bronckin said.

"This took you a half-hour?"

"I had a cigarette while I was there."

"Meet anybody you know there?"

"No."

"At the movie?"

"No."

"And you didn't have the gun with you, that right?"

"I don't think I did."

"Do you usually carry it around?"

"Sometimes."

"You ever been in trouble with the Law?"

"Yeah."

"Spell it."

"I served two at" Sing Sing."

"What for?"

"Assault with a deadly weapon."

"What was the weapon?" Bronckin hesitated.

"I'm listening," Carella said.

"A .45."

"This one?"

"No."

"Which?"

"Another one I had."

"Have you still got it?" Again, Bronckin hesitated. "Have you still got it?"

Carella repeated. "Yes."

"How come? Didn't the police ..."

"I ditched the gun. They never found it A friend of mine picked it up for me."

"Did you use the business end?"

"No. The butt."

"On who?"

"What difference does it make?"

"I want to know. Who?"

"A... a lady."

"A woman?"

"Yes."

"How old?"

"Forty. Fifty."

"Which?"

"Fifty."

"You're a nice guy."

"Yeah," Bronckin said.

"Who collared you? Which precinct?"

"Ninety-second, I think."

"Was it?"

"Yes."

"Who were the cops?"

"I don't know."

"The ones who made the arrest, I mean."

"There was only one."

"A dick?"

"No."

"When was this?" Bush asked.

"Fifty-two."

"Where's that other .45?"

"Back at my room."

"Where?"

"831 Haven."

Carella jotted down the address. "What else have you got there?"

"You guys going to help me?"

"What help do you need?"

"Well, I keep a few guns."

"How many?"

"Six," Bronckin said.

"What?"

"Yeah."

"Name them."

"The two .45's. Then there's a Luger, and a Mauser, and I even got a Tokarev."

"What else?" "Oh, just a .22."

"All in your room?"

"Yeah, it's quite a collection."

"Your shoes there, too?"

"Yeah. What's with my shoes?"

"No permits for any of these guns, huh?"

"No. Slipped my mind."

"I'll bet. Hank, call the Ninety-second. Find out who collared Bronckin in '52. I think Foster started at our house, but Reardon may have been a transfer."

"Oh," Bronckin said suddenly.

"What?"

"That's what this is all about, huh? Those two cops."

"Yes."

"You're 'way off," Bronckin said.

"Maybe. What time'd you get out of that RKO?"

"About the same. Eleven-thirty, twelve."

"The other one check, Hank?"

"Yep."

"Better call the RKO on North 80th and check this one, too. You can go now, Bronckin. Your escort's in the hall."

"Hey," Bronckin said, "how about a break? I helped you, didn't I? How about a break?"

Carella blew his nose.

None of the shoes in Bronckin's apartment owned heels even faintly resembling the heel-print cast the Lab boys had.

Ballistics reported that neither of the .45's in Bronckin's possession could have fired any of the fatal bullets.

The 92nd Precinct reported that neither Michael Reardon or David Foster had ever worked there.

There was only one thing the investigators could bank on. The heat.

Chapter FIFTEEN

at seven twenty-six that Thursday night, the city looked skyward.

The city had heard a sound, and it paused to identify the sound. The sound was the roll of distant thunder.

And it seemed, simultaneously, as if a sudden breeze sprang up from the North and washed the blistering face of the city. The ominous rolling in the sky grew closer, and now there were lightning flashes, erratic, jagged streaks that knifed the sky.

The people of the city turned their faces upward and waited.

It seemed the rain would never come. The lightning was wild in its fury, lashing the tall buildings, arcing over the horizon. The thunder answered the spitting angers of the lightning, booming its own furious epithets.

And then, suddenly, the sky split open and the rain poured down. Huge drops, and they pelted the sidewalks and the gutters and the streets; and the asphalt and concrete sizzled when the first drops fell; and the citizens of the city smiled and watched the rain, watched the huge drops— God, how big the drops were!—splattering against the ground. And the smiles broadened, and people slapped each other on the back, and it looked as if everything was going to be all right again.

Until the rain stopped.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It had burst from the sky like water that had broken through a dam. It rained for four minutes and thirty-six seconds. And then, as though someone had suddenly plugged the broken wall of the dam, it stopped.

The lightning still flashed across the sky, and the thunder Still growled in response, but there was no rain.

The cool relief the rain had brought lasted no more than ten minutes. At the end of that time, the streets were baking again, and the citizens were swearing and mumbling and sweating.

Nobody likes practical jokes.

Even when God is playing them.

She stood by the window when the rain stopped.

She swore mentally, and she reminded herself that she would have to teach Steve sign language, so that he'd know when she was swearing. He had promised to come tonight, and the promise filled her now, and she wondered what she should wear for him.

"Nothing" was probably the best answer. She was pleased with her joke. She must remember it. To tell to him when he came.

The street was suddenly very sad. The rain had brought gaiety, but now the rain was gone, and there was only the solemn grey of the street, as solemn as death.

Death.

Two dead, two men he worked with and knew well, why couldn't he have been a streetcleaner or a flagpole sitter or something, why a policeman, why a cop?

She turned to look at the clock, wondering what time it was, wondering how long it would be before he came, how long it would be before she spotted the slow, back-and-forth twisting of the knob, before she rushed to the door to open it for him. The clock was no comfort. It would be hours yet. If he came, of course. If nothing else happened, something to keep him at the station house, another killing, another ...

No, I mustn't think of that.

It's not fair to Steve to think that.

If I think of harm coming to him...

Nothing will happen to him ... no. Steve is strong, Steve is a good cop, Steve can take care of himself. But Reardon was a good cop, and Foster, and they're dead now, how good can a cop be when he's shot in the back with a .45? How good is any cop against a killer in ambush?

No, don't think these things.

The murders are over now. There will be no more. Foster was the end. It's done. Done.

Steve, hurry.

She sat facing the door, knowing it would be hours yet, but waiting for the knob to turn, waiting for the knob to tell her he was there.

The man rose.

He was in his undershorts. They were gaily patterned, and they fitted him snugly, and he walked from the bed to the dresser with a curiously ducklike motion. He was a tall man, excellently built. He examined his profile in the mirror over the dresser, looked at the clock, sighed heavily, and then went back to the bed.

There was time yet.

He lay and looked at the ceiling, and then he suddenly desired a cigarette. He rose and walked to the dresser again, walking with the strange ducklike waddle which was uncomplimentary to a man of his physique. He lighted the cigarette and then went back to the bed, where he lay puffing and thinking.

He was thinking about the cop he would kill later that night.

Lieutenant Byrnes stopped in to chat with Captain Frick, commanding officer of the precinct, before he checked out that night.

"How's it going?" Frick asked.

Byrnes shrugged. "Looks like we've got the only cool thing in this city."

"Huh?"

"This case."

"Oh. Yeah," Frick said. Frick was tired. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and all this hullabaloo made him tired. If cops got knocked off, those were the breaks. Here today, gone tomorrow. You can't live forever, and you can't take it with you. Find the perpetrator, sure, but don't push a man too hard. You can't push a man too hard in this heat, especially when he's not as young as he used to be, and tired.

To tell the truth, Frick was a tired man even when he was twenty, and Byrnes knew it He didn't particularly care for the captain, but he was a conscientious cop, and a conscientious cop checked with the precinct commander every now and then, even if he felt the commander was an egghead.

"You're really working the boys, aren't you?" Frick asked.

"Yes," Byrnes said, thinking that should have been obvious even to an egghead.

"I figure this for some screwball," Frick said. "Got himself a peeve, figured he'd go out and shoot somebody."

"Why cops?" Byrnes asked.

"Why not? How can you figure what a screwball will do? Probably knocked off Reardon by accident, not even knowing he was a cop. Then saw all the publicity the thing got in the papers, figured it was a good idea, and purposely gunned for another cop."

"How'd he know Foster was a cop? Foster was in street clothes, same as Reardon."

"Maybe he's a screwball who's had run-ins with the law before, how do I know? One thing's for sure, though. He's a screwball."

"Or a mighty shrewd guy," Byrnes said.

"How do you figure that? What brains does it take to pull a trigger?"

"It doesn't take any brains," Byrnes said. "Unless you get away with it."

"He won't," Frick answered. He sighed expansively. He was tired. He was getting old. Even his hair was white. Old men shouldn't have to solve mysteries in hot weather. "Hot, ain't it?" Frick said. "Yes indeed," Byrnes replied.

"You heading for home now?"

"Yes."

"Good for you. I'll be taking off in a little while, too. Some of the boys are out on an attempted suicide, though. Want to find out how it turns out. Some dame on the roof, supposed to be ready to jump." Frick shook his head. "Screwballs, huh?"

"Yeah," Byrnes said.

"Sent my wife and kids away to the mountains," Frick said. "Damn glad I did. This heat ain't fit for man nor beast."

"No, it's not," Byrnes agreed.

The phone on Prick's desk rang. Frick picked it up.

"Captain Frick," he said. "What? Oh. Okay, fine. Right." He replaced the receiver. "Not a suicide at all," he said to Byrnes. "The dame was just drying her hair, had it sort of hanging over the edge of the roof. Screwball, huh?"

"Yes. Well, I'm taking off."

"Better keep your gun handy. Might get you next"

"Who?" Byrnes asked, heading for the door.

"Him."

"Huh?"

"The screwball."

Roger Havilland was a bull.

Even the other bulls called him a bull. A real bull. He was a "bull" as differentiated from a "bull" which was a detective. Havilland was built like a bull, and he ate like a bull, and he screwed like a bull, and he even snorted like a bull. There were no two ways about it. He was a real bull.

He was also not a very nice guy.

There was a time when Havilland was a nice guy, but everyone had forgotten that time, including Havilland. There was a time when Havilland could talk to a prisoner for hours on end without once having to use his hands. There was a time when Havilland did not bellow every other syllable to leave his mouth. Havilland had once been a gentle cop.

But Havilland had once had a most unfortunate thing happen to him. Havilland had tried to break up a street fight one night, being on his way home at the time and being, at the time, that sort of conscientious cop who recognized his duty twenty-four hours a day. The street fight had not been a very big one, as street fights go. As a matter of fact, it was a friendly sort of argument, more or less, with hardly a zip gun in sight.

Havilland stepped in and very politely attempted to bust it up. He drew his revolver and fired a few shots over the heads of the brawlers and somehow or other one of the brawlers hit Havilland on the right wrist with a piece of lead pipe. The gun left Havilland's hand, and then the unfortunate thing happened.

The brawlers, content until then to be bashing in their own heads, suddenly decided a cop's head would be more fun to play upon. They turned on the disarmed Havilland, dragged him into an alley, and went to work on him with remarkable dispatch.

The boy with the lead pipe broke Havilland's arm in four places.

The compound fracture was a very painful thing to bear, more painful in that the damned thing would not set properly and the doctors were forced to rebreak the bones and set them all over again.

For a while there, Havilland doubted if he'd be able to keep his job on the force. Since he'd only recently made Detective 3rd Grade, the prospect was not a particularly pleasant one to him. But the arm healed, as arms will, and he came out of it just about as whole as he went into it— except that his mental attitude had changed somewhat.

There is an old adage which goes something like this: "One guy can screw it up for the whole company."

Well, the fellow with the lead pipe certainly screwed it up for the whole company, if not the whole city. Havilland became a bull, a real bull. He had learned his lesson. He would never be cornholed again.

In Havilland's book, there was only one way to beat down a prisoner's resistance. You forgot the word "down," and you concentrated on beating in the opposite direction: "up."

Not many prisoners liked Havilland.

Not many cops liked him, either.

It is even doubtful whether or not Havilland liked himself.

"Heat," he said to Carella, "is all in the mind."

"My mind is sweating the same as the rest of me," Carella said.

"If I told you right this minute that you were sitting on a cake of ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, you'd begin to feel cool."

"I don't feel any cooler," Carella said.

"That's because you're a jackass," Havilland said, shouting. Havilland always shouted. When Havilland whispered, he shouted. "You don't want to feel cool. You want to feel hot. It makes you think you're working."

"I am working."

"I'm going home," Havilland shouted abruptly.

Carella glanced at his watch. It was 10:17.

"What's the matter?" Havilland shouted.

"Nothing."

"It's a quarter after ten, that's what you're looking sour about?" Havilland bellowed.

"I'm not looking sour."

"Well, I don't care how you look," Havilland roared. "I'm going home."

"So go home. I'm waiting for my relief."

"I don't like the way you said that," Havilland answered.

"Why not?"

"It implied that / am not waiting for my relief."

Carella shrugged and blithely said, "Let your conscience be your guide, brother."

"Do you know how many hours I've been on this job?"

"How many?"

"Thirty-six," Havilland said. "I'm so sleepy I could crawl into a sewer and not wake up until Christmastime."

"You'll pollute our water supply," Carella said.

"Up yours!" Havilland shouted. He signed out and was leaving when Carella said, "Hey!"

"What?"

"Don't get killed out there."

"Up yours," Havilland said again, and then he left.

The man dressed quietly and rapidly. He put on black trousers and a clean white shirt, and a gold-and-black striped tie. He put on dark blue socks, and then he reached for his shoes. His shoes carried O'Sullivan heels.

He put on the black jacket to his suit, and then he went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. The .45 lay on his handkerchiefs, lethal and blue-black. He pushed a fresh clip into the gun, and then put the gun into his jacket pocket.

He walked to the door in a ducklike waddle, opened it, took a last look around the apartment, flicked out the lights, and went into the night.

Steve Carella was relieved at 11:33 by a detective named Hal Willis. He filled Willis in on anything that was urgent, left him and walked downstairs.

"Going to see the girlfriend, Steve?" the desk sergeant asked.

"Yep," Carella answered.

"Wish I was as young as you," the sergeant said.

"Ah, come on," Carella replied. "You can't be more than seventy."

The sergeant chuckled. "Not a day over," he answered.

"Good night," Carella said.

"Night."

Carella walked out of the building and headed for his car, which was parked two blocks away in a "No Parking" zone.

Hank Bush left the precinct at 11:52 when his relief showed up.

"I thought you'd never get here," he said.

"I thought so, too."

"What happened?"

"It's too hot to run."

Bush grimaced, went to the phone, and dialed his home number. He waited several moments. The phone kept ringing on the other end.

"Hello?"

"Alice?"

"Yes." She paused. "Hank?"

"I'm on my way, honey. Why don't you make some iced coffee?"

"All right, I will."

"Is it very hot there?"

"Yes. Maybe you should pick up some ice cream."

"All right."

"No, never mind. No. Just come home. The iced coffee will do."

"Okay. I'll see you later."

"Yes, darling."

Bush hung up. He turned to his relief. "I hope you don't get relieved 'til nine, you bastard," he said.

'The heat's gone to his head," the detective said to the air. Bush snorted, signed out, and left the building.

The man with the .45 waited in the shadows.

His hand sweated on the walnut stock of the .45 in his jacket pocket. Wearing black, he knew he blended with the void of the alley mouth, but he was nonetheless nervous and a little frightened. Still, this had to be done.

He heard footsteps approaching. Long, firm strides. A man in a hurry. He stared up the street Yes.

Yes, this was his man.

His hand tightened on the .45.

The cop was closer now. The man in black stepped out of the alleyway abruptly. The cop stopped in his tracks. They were almost of the same height. A street lamp on the corner cast their shadows onto the pavement.

"Have you got a light, Mac?"

The cop was staring at the man in black. Then, suddenly, the cop was reaching for his back pocket. The man in black saw what was happening, and he brought up the .45 quickly, wrenching it free from his pocket. Both men fired simultaneously.

He felt the cop's bullet rip into his shoulder, but the .45 was bucking now, again and again, and he saw the cop clutch at his chest and fall for the pavement. The Detective's Special lay several feet from the cop's body now.

He backed away from the cop, ready to run.

"You son of a bitch," the cop said.

He whirled. The cop was on his feet, rushing for him. He brought up the .45 again, but he was too late. The cop had him, his thick arms churning. He fought pulling free, and the cop clutched at his head, and he felt hair wrench loose, and then the cop's fingers clawed at his face, ripping, gouging.

He fired again. The cop doubled over and then fell to the pavement, his face colliding with the harsh concrete.

His shoulder was bleeding badly. He cursed the cop, and he stood over him, and his blood dripped onto the lifeless shoulders, and he held the .45 out at arm's length and squeezed the trigger again. The cop's head gave a sidewards lurch and then was still.

The man in black ran off down the street.

The cop on the sidewalk was Hank Bush.

Chapter SIXTEEN

sam grossman was a police lieutenant. He was also a lab technician. He was tall and angular, a man who'd have looked more at home on a craggy New England farm than in the sterile orderliness of the Police Laboratory which stretched almost half the length of the first floor at Headquarters.

Grossman wore glasses, and his eyes were a guileless blue behind them. There was a gentility to his manner, a quiet warmth reminiscent of a long-lost era, even though his speech bore the clipped stamp of a man who is used to dealing with cold scientific fact.

"Hank was a smart cop," he said to Carella.

Carella nodded. It was Hank who'd said that it didn't take much brain power to be a detective.

"The way I figure it," Grossman went on, "Hank thought he was a goner. The autopsy disclosed four wounds altogether, three in the chest, one at the back of the head. We can safely assume, I think, that the head shot was the last one fired, a coup de grace."

"Go ahead," Carella said.

"Figure he'd been shot two or three times already, and possibly knew he'd be a dead pigeon before this was over. Whatever the case, he knew we could use more information on the bastard doing the shooting."

"The hair, you mean?" Carella asked.

"Yes. We found clumps of hair on the sidewalk. All the hairs had living roots, so we'd have known they were pulled away by force even if we hadn't found some in the palms and fingers of Hank's hands. But he was thinking overtime. He also tore a goodly chunk of meat from the ambusher's face. That told us a few things, too."

"And what else?"

"Blood. Hank shot this guy, Steve. Well, undoubtedly you know that already."

"Yes. What does it all add up to?"

"A lot," Grossman said. He picked up a report from his desk. "This is what we know for sure, from what we were able to piece together, from what Hank gave us."

Grossman cleared his throat and began reading.

"The killer is a male, white, adult, not over say fifty years of age. He is a mechanic, possibly highly skilled and highly paid. He is dark complected, his skin is oily, he has a heavy · beard which he tries to disguise with talc. His hair is dark brown, and he is approximately six feet tall. Within the past two days, he took a haircut and a singe. He is fast, possibly indicating a man who is not overweight. Judging from the hair, he should weigh about 180. He is wounded, most likely above the waist, and not superficially."

"Break it down for me," Carella said, somewhat amazed— as he always was—by what the Lab boys could do with a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair.

"Okay," Grossman said. "Male. In this day and age, this sometimes poses a problem, especially if we've got only hair from the head. Luckily, Hank solved that one for us. The head hairs of either a male or a female will have an average diameter of less than 0.08 mm. Okay, having only a batch of head hairs to go on, we've got to resort to other measurements to determine whether or not the hair came from a male or a female. Length of the hair used to be a good gauge. If the length was more than 8 cm., we could assume the hair came from a woman. But the goddamn women nowadays are wearing their hair as short as, if not shorter than, the men. So we could have been fooled on this one, if Hank hadn't scratched this guy's face."

"What's the scratch have to do with it?"

"It gave us a skin sample, to begin with. That's how we knew the man was white, dark complected, and oily. But it also gave us a beard hair."

"How do you know it was a beard hair?"

"Simple," Grossman said. "Under the microscope, it showed up in cross-section as being triangular, with concave sides. Only beard hairs are shaped that way. The diameter, too, was greater than 0.1 mm. Simple. A beard hair. Had to be a man."

"How do you know he was a mechanic?"

"The head hairs were covered with metal dust."

"You said possibly a highly skilled and highly paid one. Why?"

"The head hairs were saturated with a hair preparation. We broke it down and checked it against our sample sheets. It's very expensive stuff. Five bucks the bottle when sold singly. Ten bucks when sold in a set with the after-shave talc. This customer was wearing both the hair gook and the talc. What mechanic can afford ten bucks for such luxuries—unless he's highly paid? If he's highly paid, chances are he's highly skilled."

"How do you know he's not over fifty?" Carella asked.

"Again, by the diameter of the hair and also the pigmentation. Here, take a look at this chart" He extended a sheet to Carella.

Age 12 days 6 months 18 months 15 years Adults

Diameter mm 0.024 0.037 0.038 0.053 0.07

"Fellow's head hair had a diameter of 0.071," Grossman said.

"That only shows he's a adult."

"Sure. But if we get a hair with a living root, and there are hardly any pigment grains in the cortex, we can be pretty sure the hair comes from an old person. This guy had plenty of pigment grains. Also, even though we rarely make any age guesses on such single evidence, an older person's hair has a tendency to become finer. This guy's hair is coarse and thick."

Carella sighed.

"Am I going too fast for you?"

"No," Carella said. "How about the singe and the haircut?"

"The singe was simple. The hairs were curled, slightly swelled, and grayish in color. Not naturally gray, you understand."

"The haircut?"

"If the guy had had a haircut just before he did the shooting, the head hairs would have shown clean-cut edges. After forty-eight hours, the cut begins to grow round. We can pretty well determine just when a guy's had his last haircut"

"You said he was six feet tall."

"Well, Ballistics helped us on that one."

"Spell it," Carella said.

"We had the blood to work with. Did I mention the guy has type O blood?"

"You guys . .." Carella started.

"Aw come on, Steve, that was simple."

"Yeah."

"Yeah," Grossman said. "Look, Steve, the blood serum of one person has the ability to agglutinate . . ." He paused. "That means clump, or bring together the red blood cells of certain other people. There are four blood groups: Group O, Group A, Group B, Group AB. Okay?"

"Okay." Carella said.

"We take the sample of blood, and we mix a little of it with samples from the four groups. Oh, hell, here's another chart for you to look at." He handed it to Carella.

1. Group O — no agglutination in either serum.

2. Group A — agglutination in serum B only.

3. Group B — agglutination in serum A only.

4. Group AB — agglutination in both serums.

"This guy's blood—and he left a nice trail of it when he was running away, in addition to several spots on the back of Hank's shirt—would not agglutinate, or clump, in any of the samples. Hence, type O. Another indication that he's white, incidentally. A and O are most common in white people. 45% of all white people are in the O group."

"How do you figure he's six feet tall. You still haven't told me."

"Well, as I said, this is where Ballistics came in. In addition to what we had, of course. The blood spots on Hank's shirt weren't of much value in determining from what height they had fallen since the cotton absorbed them when they hit. But the blood stains on the pavement told us several things."

"What'd they tell you?"

"First that he was going pretty fast. You see, the faster a man is walking, the narrower and longer will be the blood drops and the teeth on those drops. They look something like a small gear, if you can picture that, Steve."

"I can."

"Okay. These were narrow and also sprinkled in many small drops, which told us that he was moving fast and also that the drops were falling from a height of somewhere around two yards or so."

"So?"

"So, if he was moving fast, he wasn't hit in the legs or the stomach. A man doesn't move very fast under those conditions. If the drops came from a height of approximately two yards, chances are the man was hit high above the waist. Ballistics pried Hank's slug out of the brick wall of the building, and from the angle—assuming Hank only had time to shoot from a draw—they figured the man was struck somewhere around the shoulder. This indicates a tall man, I mean when you put the blood drops and the slug together."

"How do you know he wasn't wounded superficially?"

"All the blood, man. He left a long trail."

"You said he weighs about 180. How ..."

"The hair was healthy hair. The guy was going fast. The speed tells us he wasn't overweight. A healthy man of six feet should weigh about 180, no?"

"You've given me a lot, Sam," Carella said. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to check on doctors' gunshot wound reports, or absentee mechanics. Not to mention this hair lotion and talc. It's called 'Skylark,' by the way."

"Well, thanks, anyway."

"Don't thank me," Grossman said.

"Huh?"

"Thank Hank."

Chapter SEVENTEEN

the teletype alarm went out to fourteen states. It read:

XXXXX APPREHEND SUSPICION OF MURDER XXX

UNIDENTIFIED MALE WHITE CAUCASIAN ADULT BELOW FIFTY XXXXX

POSSIBLE HEIGHT SIX FEET OR OVER XXX

POSSIBLE WEIGHT ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY XXX

DARK HAIR SWARTHY COMPLEXION HEAVY BEARD XXXX

USES HAIR PREPARATION AND TALC TRADENAME "SKYLARK" XXXX

SHOES MAY POSSIBLY CARRY HEELS WITH "O'SULLIVAN" TRADENAME XXXX

MAN ASSUMED TO BE SKILLED MECHANIC MAY POSSIBLY SEEK SUCH WORK XXXXX

GUNWOUND ABOVE WAIST POSSIBLE SHOULDER HIGH MAN MAY SEEK DOCTOR XXXX

THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS AND ARMED WITH COLT .45 AUTOMATIC XX

"Those are a lot of 'possiblys'," Havilland said.

"Too damn many," Carella agreed. "But at least it's a place to start."

It was not so easy to start.

They could, of course, have started by calling all the doctors in the city, on the assumption that one or more of them had failed to report a gunshot wound, as specified by law. However, there were quite a few doctors in the city. To be exact, there were:

4,283 doctors in Calm's Point

1,975 doctors in Riverhead

8,728 doctors in Isola (including the Diamondback and Hillside sectors)

2,614 doctors in Majesta and 264 doctors in Bethtown for a grand total of COUNT 'EM!

17,864 DOCTORS 17,864

Those are a lot of medical men. Assuming each call would take approximately five minutes, a little multiplication told the cops it would take them approximately 89,320 minutes to call each doctor in the classified directory. Of course, there were 22,000 policemen on the force. If each cop took on the job of calling four doctors, every call could have been made before twenty minutes had expired. Unfortunately, many of the other cops had other tidbits of crime to occupy themselves with. So, faced with the overwhelming number of healers, the detectives decided to wait—instead —for one of them to call with a gunshot wound report. Since the bullet had exited the killer's body, the wound was in all likelihood a clean one, anyway, and perhaps the killer

would never seek the aid of a doctor. In which case the waiting would all be in vain.

If there were 17,864 doctors in the city, it was virtually impossible to tally the number of mechanics plying their trade there. So this line of approach was also abandoned.

There remained the hair lotion and talc with the innocent-sounding name "Skylark."

A quick check showed that both masculine beauty aids were sold over the counter of almost every drug store hi the city. They were as common as—if higher-priced than —aspirin tablets.

Good for a cold.

If you don't like them...

The police turned, instead, to their own files in the Bureau of Identification, and to the voluminous files in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And the search was on for a male, white Caucasian, under fifty years in age, dark-haired, dark-complected, six feet tall, weighing one-hundred-eighty pounds, addicted to the use of a Colt .45 automatic.

The needle may have been in the city.

But the entire United States was the haystack.

"Lady to see you, Steve," Miscolo said.

"What about?"

"Said she wanted to talk to the people investigating the cop killer." Miscolo wiped his brow. There was a big fan in the Clerical office, and he hated leaving it. Not that he didn't enjoy talking to the DD men. It was simply that Miscolo was a heavy sweater, and he didn't like the armpits of his uniform shirts ruined by unnecessary talk.

"Okay, send her in," Carella said.

Miscolo vanished, and then reappeared with a small bird-like woman whose head jerked in short arcs as she surveyed first the dividing railing and then the file cabinets and then the desks and the grilled windows and then the detectives on phones everywhere in the Squad Room, most of them in various stages of sartorial inelegance.

"This is Detective Carella," Miscolo said. "He's one of the detectives on the investigation." Miscolo sighed heavily and then fled back to the big fan in the small Clerical office.

"Won't you come in, ma'm?" Carella said.

"Miss," the woman corrected. Carella was in his shirt sleeves, and she noticed this with obvious distaste, and then glanced sharply around the room again and said, "Don't you have a private office?"

"I'm afraid not," Carella said.

"I don't want them to hear me."

"Who?" Carella asked.

"Them," she said. "Could we go to a desk somewhere in the corner?"

"Certainly," Carella said. "What did you say your name was, Miss?"

"Oreatha Bailey," the woman said. She was at least fifty-five or so, Carella surmised, with the sharp-featured face of a stereotyped witch. He led her through the gate in the railing and to an unoccupied desk in the far right corner of the room, a corner which—unfortunately—did not receive any ventilation from the windows.

When they were seated, Carella asked, "What can I do for you, Miss Bailey?"

"You don't have a bug in this corner, do you?"

"A... bug?"

"One of them dictaphone things."

"No."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Detective Carella."

"And you speak English?"

Carella suppressed a smile. "Yes, I ... I picked up the language from the natives."

"I'd have preferred an American policeman," Miss Bailey said in all seriousness.

"Well, I sometimes pass for one," Carella answered, amused.

"Very well."

There was a long pause. Carella waited.

Miss Bailey showed no signs of continuing the conversation.

"Miss ... ?"

"Shhl" she said sharply.

Carella waited.

After several moments, the woman said, "I know who killed those policemen."

Carella leaned forward, interested. The best leads sometimes came from the most unexpected sources. "Who?" he asked.

"Never you mind," she answered.

Carella waited.

"They are going to kill a lot more policemen," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan."

"Whose plan?"

"If they can do away with law enforcement, the rest will be easy," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan. First the police, then the National Guard, and then the regular Army."

Carella looked at Miss Bailey suspiciously.

"They've been sending messages to me," Miss Bailey said. "They think I'm one of them, I don't know why. They come out of the walls and give me messages."

"Who comes out of the walls?" Carella asked.

"The cockroach-men. That's why I asked if there was a bug in this corner."

"Oh, the... the cockroach-men."

"Yes."

"I see."

"Do I look like a cockroach?" she asked.

"No," Carella said. "Not particularly."

"Then why have they mistaken me for one of them? They look like cockroaches, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"They talk by radio-nuclear-thermics. I think they must be from another planet, don't you?"

"Possibly," Carella said.

"It's remarkable that I can understand them. Perhaps they've overcome my mind, do you think that's possible?"

"Anything's possible," Carella agreed.

"They told me about Reardon the night before they killed him. They said they would start with him because" he was the Commissar of Sector Three. They used a thermo-dis-integrator on him, you know that, don't you?" Miss Bailey paused, and then nodded. ".45 calibre."

"Yes," Carella said.

"Foster was the Black Prince of Argaddon. They had to get him. That's what they told me. The signals they put out are remarkably clear, considering the fact that they're in an alien tongue. I do wish you were an American, Mr. Carella. There are so many aliens around these days, that one hardly knows who to trust."

"Yes," Carella said. He could feel the sweat blotting the back of his shirt. "Yes."

"They killed Bush because he wasn't a bush, he was a tree in disguise. They hate all plant life."

"I see."

"Especially trees. They need the carbon dioxide, you see, and plants consume it. Especially trees. Trees consume a great deal of carbon dioxide."

"Certainly."

"Will you stop them, now that you know?" Miss Bailey asked.

"We'll do everything in our power," Carella said.

"The best way to stop them . . ." Miss Bailey paused and rose, clutching her purse to her narrow bosom. "Well, I don't want to tell you how to run your business."

"We appreciate your help," Carella said. He began walking her to the railing. Miss Bailey stopped.

"Would you like to know the best way to stop these cockroach-men? Guns are no good against them, you know. Because of the thermal heat."

"I didn't know that," Carella said. They were standing just inside the railing. He opened the gate for her, and she stepped through.

"There's only one way to stop them," she said.

"What's that?" Carella asked.

Miss Bailey pursed her mouth. "Step on them!" she said, and she turned on her heel and walked past Clerical, and then down the steps to the first floor.

Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.

When Carella and Havilland came into the hospital room, he was sitting up in bed, and aside from the bulky bandage over his right shoulder, you'd never know anything was wrong with him. He beamed a broad smile, and then sat up to talk to the two visiting detectives.

He chewed on the candy they'd brought him, and he said this hospital duty was real jazzy, and that they should get a look at some of the nurses in their tight white uniforms.

He seemed to bear no grudge whatever against the boy who'd shot him. Those breaks were all part of the game, he supposed. He kept chewing candy, and joking, and talking until it was almost time for the cops to leave.

Just before they left, he told a joke about a man who had three testicles.

Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

the three funerals followed upon each other's heels with remarkable rapidity. The heat did not help the classical ceremonies of death. The mourners followed the caskets and sweated. An evil, leering sun grinned its blistering grin, and freshly turned soil—which should have been cool and moist —accepted the caskets with dry, dusty indifference.

The beaches that week were jammed to capacity. In Clam's Point at Mott's Island, the scorekeeper recorded a recordbreaking crowd of two million, four hundred and seventy thousand surf seekers. The police had problems. The police had traffic problems because everyone who owned any sort of a jalopy had put it on the road. The police had fire-hydrant problems, because kids all over the city were turning on the johnny pumps, covering the spout with a flattened coffee can, and romping beneath the improvised shower. The police had burglary problems, because people were sleeping with their windows open; people were leaving parked cars unlocked, windows wide; shopkeepers were stepping across the street for a moment to catch a quick Pepsi Cola. The police had "floater" problems, because the scorched and heat-weary citizens sometimes sought relief in the polluted currents of the rivers that bound Isola—and some of them drowned, and some of them turned up with bloated bodies and bulging eyes.

On Walker Island, in the River Dix, the police had prisoner problems because the cons there decided the heat was too much for them to bear, and they banged their tin cups on the sweating bars of their hot cells, and the cops listened to the clamor and rushed for riot guns.

The police had all sorts of problems.

Carella wished she were not wearing black. He knew this was absurd. When a woman's husband is dead, the woman wears black.

But Hank and he had talked a lot in the quiet hours of the midnight tour, and Hank had many times described Alice in the black nightgowns she wore to bed. And try as he might, Carella could not disassociate the separate concepts of black: black as a sheer and frothy raiment of seduction; black as the ashy garment of mourning.

Alice Bush sat across from him in the living room of the Calm's Point apartment. The windows were wide open, and he could see the tall Gothic structures of the Calm's Point College campus etched against the merciless, glaring blue of the sky. He had worked with Bush for many years, but this was the first time he'd been inside his apartment, and the association of Alice Bush in black cast a feeling of guilt over his memories of Hank.

The apartment was not at all what he would have expected for a man like Hank. Hank was big, rough-hewn. The apartment was somehow frilly, a woman's apartment. He could not believe that Hank had been comfortable in these rooms. His eyes had scanned the furniture, small-scaled stuff, stuff in which Hank could never have spread his legs. The curtains at the windows were ruffled chintz. The walls of the living room were a sickeningly pale lemon shade. The end tables were heavy with curlycues and inlaid patterns. The corners of the room contained knick-knack shelves, and the shelves were loaded with fragile glass figurines of dogs and cats and gnomes and one of Little Bo Peep holding a delicately blown, slender glass shepherd's crook.

The room, the apartment, seemed to Carella to be the intricately cluttered design for a comedy of manners. Hank must have been as out of place here as a plumber at a literary tea.

Not so Mrs. Bush.

Mrs. Bush lounged on a heavily padded chartreuse love seat, her long legs tucked under her, her feet bare. Mrs. Bush belonged in this room. This room had been designed for Mrs. Bush, designed for femininity, and the Male Animal be damned.

She wore black silk. She was uncommonly big-busted, incredibly narrow-waisted. Her hip bones were wide, flesh-padded, a woman whose body had been designed for the bearing of children—but somehow she didn't seem the type. He could not visualize her squeezing life from her loins. He could only visualize her as Hank had described her—in the role of a seductress. The black silk dress strengthened the concept. The frou-frou room left no doubt. This was a stage set for Alice Bush.

The dress was not low-cut. It didn't have to be.

Nor was it particularly tight, and it didn't have to be that, either.

It was not expensive, but it fitted her figure well. He had no doubt that anything she wore would fit her figure well. He had no doubt that even a potato sack would look remarkably interesting on the woman who had been Hank's wife.

"What do I do now?" Alice asked. "Make up beds at the precinct? That's the usual routine for a cop's widow, isn't it?"

"Did Hank leave any insurance?" Carella asked.

"Nothing to speak of. Insurance doesn't come easily to cops, does it? Besides . . . Steve, he was a young man. Who thinks of things like this? Who thinks these things are going to happen?" She looked at him wide-eyed. Her eyes were very brown, her hair was very blond, her complexion was fair and unmarred. She was a beautiful woman, and he did not like considering her such. He wanted her to be dowdy and forlorn. He did not want her looking fresh and lovely. Goddamnit, what was there about this room that suffocated a man? He felt like the last male alive, surrounded by bare-breasted beauties on a tropical island surrounded by man-eating sharks. There was no place to run to. The island was called Amazonia or something, and the island was female to the core, and he was the last man alive.

The room and Alice Bush.

The femaleness reached out to envelop him in a cloying, clinging embrace.

"Change your mind, Steve," Alice said. "Have a drink."

"All right, I will," he answered.

She rose, displaying a long white segment of thigh as she got to her feet, displaying an almost indecent oblivion to the way she handled her body. She had lived with it for a long time, he supposed. She no longer marveled at its allure. She accepted it, and lived with it, and others could marvel. A thigh was a thigh, what the hell! What was so special about the thigh of Alice Bush?

"Scotch?"

"All right."

"How does it feel, something like this?" she asked. She was standing at the bar across from him. She stood with the loosehipped stance of a fashion model, incongruous because he always pictured fashion models as willowy and thin and flat-chested. Alice Bush was none of these.

"Something like what?"

"Investigating the death of a colleague and friend."

"Weird," Carella said.

"I'll bet."

"You're taking it very well," Carella said.

"I have to," Alice answered briefly.

"Why?"

"Because I'll fall all to pieces if I don't. He's in the ground, Steve. It's not going to help for me to wail and moan all over the place."

"I suppose not."

"We've got to go on living, don't we? We can't simply give up because someone we love is gone, can we?"

"No," Carella agreed.

She walked to him and handed him the drink. Their fingers touched for an instant. He looked up at her. Her face was completely guileless. The contact, he was sure, had been accidental.

She walked to the window and looked out toward the college. "It's lonely here without him," she said.

"It's lonely at the house without him, too," Carella said, surprised. He had not realized, before this, how really attached he had become to Hank.

"I was thinking of taking a trip," Alice said, "getting away from things that remind me of him."

"Things like what?" Carella asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Alice said. "Like . . . last night I saw his hair brush on the dresser, and there was some of that wild red hair of his caught in the bristles, and all at once it reminded me of him, of the wildness of him. He was a wild person, Steve." She paused. "Wild."

The word was female somehow. He was reminded again of the word portrait Hank had drawn, of the real portrait before him, standing by the window, of the femaleness everywhere around him on this island. He could not blame her, he knew that. She was only being herself, being Alice Bush, being Woman. She was only a pawn of fate, a girl who automatically embodied womanhood, a girl who . . . hell!

"How far have you come along on it?" she asked. She whirled from the window, went back to the love seat and collapsed into it. The movement was not a gracious one. It was feline, however. She sprawled in the love seat like a big jungle cat, and then she tucked her legs under her again, and he would not have been surprised if she'd begun purring in that moment.

He told her what they thought they knew about the suspected killer. Alice nodded.

"Quite a bit to go on," she said.

"Not really."

"I mean, if he should seek a doctor's aid."

"He hasn't yet. Chances are he won't. He probably dressed the wound himself."

"Badly shot?"

"Apparently. But clean."

"Hank should have killed him," she said. Surprisingly, there was no viciousness attached to the words. The words themselves bore all the lethal potential of a coiled rattler, but the delivery made them harmless.

"Yes," Carella agreed. "He should have."

"But he didn't."

"No."

"What's your next step?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Homicide North is up a tree on these killings, and I guess we are, too. I've got a few ideas kicking around, though."

"A lead?" she asked.

"No. Just ideas."

"What kind of ideas?"

"They'd bore you."

"My husband's been killed," Alice said coldly. "I assure you I will not be bored by anything that may lead to finding his killer."

"Well, I'd prefer not to air any ideas until I know what I'm talking about."

Alice smiled. "That's different. You haven't touched your drink."

He raised the glass to his lips. The drink was very strong.

"Wow!" he said. "You don't spare the alcohol, do you?"

"Hank liked his strong," she said. "He liked everything strong."

And again, like an interwoven thread of personality, a personality dictated by the demands of a body that could look nothing but blatantly inviting, Alice Bush had inadvertently lighted another fuse. He had the feeling that she would suddenly explode into a thousand flying fragments of breast and hip and thigh, splashed over the landscape like a Dali painting.

"I'd better be getting along," he said. 'The City doesn't pay me for sipping drinks all morning."

"Stay a while," she said. "I have a few ideas myself."

He glanced up quickly, almost suspecting an edge of double entendre in her voice. He was mistaken. She had turned away from him and was looking out the window again, her face in profile, her body in profile.

"Let me hear them," he said.

"A cop hater," she replied.

"Maybe."

"It has to be. Who else would senselessly take three lives? It has to be a cop hater, Steve. Doesn't Homicide North think so?"

"I haven't talked to them in the past few days. That's what they thought in the beginning, I know."

"What do they think now?"

"That's hard to say."

"What do you think now?"

"Maybe a cop hater. Reardon and Foster, yes, a cop hater. But Hank... I don't know."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"Well, Reardon and Foster were partners, so we could assume that possibly some jerk was carrying a grudge against them. They worked together . . . maybe they rubbed some idiot the wrong way."

"Yes?"

"But Hank never worked with them. Oh, well maybe not never. Maybe once or twice on a plant or something. He never made an important arrest with either of them along, though. Our records show that."

"Who says it has to be someone with a personal grudge, Steve? This may simply be some goddamned lunatic." She seemed to be getting angry. He didn't know why she was getting angry because she'd certainly been calm enough up to this point. But her breath was coming heavier now, and her breasts heaved disconcertingly. "Just some crazy, rotten, twisted fool who's taken it into his mind to knock off every cop in the 87th Precinct. Does that sound so far-fetched?"

"No, not at all. As a matter of fact, we've checked all the mental institutions in the area for people who were recently released who might possibly have had a history of ..." He

shook his head. "You know, we figured perhaps a paranoiac, somebody who'd go berserk at the sight of a uniform. Except these men weren't in uniform." "No, they weren't. What'd you get?"

"We thought we had one lead. Not anyone with a history of dislike for policemen, but a young man who had a lot of officer trouble in the Army. He was recently released from Bramlook as cured, but that doesn't mean a goddamned thing. We checked with the psychiatrists there, and they felt his illness would never break out in an act of violence, no less a prolonged rampage of violence."

"And you let it drop?"

"No, we looked the kid up. Harmless. Alibis a mile long."

"Who else have you checked?"

"We've got feelers out to all our underworld contacts. We thought this might be a gang thing, where some hood has an alleged grievance against something we've done to hamper him, and so he's trying to show us we're not so high and mighty. He hires a torpedo and begins methodically putting us in our places. But there's been no rumble so far, and underworld revenge is not something you can keep very quiet."

"What else?"

"I've been wading through F.B I. photos all morning. Jesus, you'd never realize how many men there are who fit the possible description we have." He sipped at the scotch. He was beginning to feel a little more comfortable with Alice. Maybe she wasn't so female, after all. Or maybe her femaleness simply enveloped you after a while, causing you to lose all perspective. Whatever it was, the room wasn't as oppressive now.

'Turn up anything? From the photos?"

"Not yet. Half of them are in jail, and the rest are scattered all over the country. You see, the hell of this thing is ... well..."

"What?"

"How'd the killer know that these men were cops? They were all in plainclothes. Unless he'd had contact with them before, how could he know?"

"Yes, I see what you mean."

"Maybe he sat in a parked car across from the house and watched everyone who went in and out. If he did that for a while, he'd get to know who worked there and who didn't."

"He could have done that," Alice said thoughtfully. "Yes,

he could have." She crossed her legs unconsciously. Carella looked away.

"Several things against that theory, though," Carella said. "That's what makes this case such a bitch." The word had sneaked out, and he glanced up apprehensively. Alice Bush seemed not to mind the profanity. She had probably heard enough of it from Hank. Her legs were still crossed. They were very good legs. Her skirt had fallen into a funny position. He looked away again.

"You see, if somebody had been watching the house, we'd have noticed him. That is, if he'd been watching it long enough to know who worked there and who was visiting ... that would take time. We'd surely have spotted him."

"Not if he were hidden."

"There are no buildings opposite the house. Only the park."

"He could have been somewhere in the park . . . with binoculars, maybe."

"Sure. But how could he tell the detectives from the patrolmen, then?"

"What?"

"He killed three detectives. Maybe it was chance. I don't think so. All right, how the hell could he tell the patrolmen from the detectives?"

"Very simply," Alice said. "Assuming he was watching, he'd see the men when they arrived, and he'd see them after muster when they went out to their beats. They'd be in uniform then. I'm talking about the patrolmen."

"Yes, I suppose." He took a deep swallow of the drink. Alice moved on the love seat.

"I'm hot," she said.

He did not look at her. He knew that his eyes would have been drawn downward if he did, and he did not want to see what Alice was unconsciously, obliviously showing.

"I don't suppose this heat has helped the investigation any," she said.

"This heat hasn't helped anything any."

"I'm changing to shorts and a halter as soon as you get out of here."

"There's a hint if ever I heard one," Carella said.

"No, I didn't mean . . oh hell, Steve, I'd change to them now if I thought you were going to stay longer. I just thought you were leaving soon. I mean . . ." She made a vague motion with one hand. "Oh, nuts."

"I am leaving, Alice. Lots of photos to look through back there." He rose. "Thanks for the drink." He started for the door, not looking back when she got up, not wanting to look at her legs again.

She took his hand at the door. Her grip was firm and warm. Her hand was fleshy. She squeezed his hand.

"Good luck, Steve. If there's anything I can do to help ..."

"We'll let you know. Thanks again."

He left the apartment and walked down to the street It was very hot in the street.

Curiously, he felt like going to bed with somebody.

Anybody.

Chapter NINETEEN

"Now here's what I call a real handsome one," Hal Willis said. Hal Willis was the only really small detective Carella had ever known. He passed the minimum height requirement of five/eight, of course, but just barely. And contrasted against the imposing bulk of the other bulls in the division, he looked more like a soft shoe dancer than a tough cop. That he was a tough cop, there was no doubt. His bones were slight, and his face was thin, and he looked as if he would have trouble swatting a fly, but anyone who'd ever tangled with Hal Willis did not want the dubious pleasure again. Hal Willis was a Judo expert.

Hal Willis could shake your hand and break your backbone in one and the same motion. Were you not careful with Hal Willis, you might find yourself enwrapped in the excruciating pain of a Thumb Grip. Were you even less careful, you might discover yourself hurtling through space in the fury of either a Rugby or a Far-Eastern Capsize. Ankle Throws, Flying Mares, Back Wheels, all were as much a part of Hal Willis' personality as the sparkling brown eyes in his face.

Those eyes were amusedly turned now toward the F.B.I, photo which he shoved across the desk toward Carella.

The photo was of a man who was indeed a "real handsome one." His nose had been fractured in at least four places. A scar ran the length of his left cheek. Scar tissue hooded his eyes. He owned cauliflower ears and hardly any teeth. His name, of course, was "Pretty-Boy Krajak."

"A doll," Carella said. "Why'd they send him to us?"

"Dark hair, six feet two, weighing one-eighty-five. How'd you like to run across him some dark and lonely night?"

"I wouldn't. Is he in the city?"

"He's in L.A.," Willis said.

"Then we'll leave him to Joe Friday," Carella cracked.

"Have another Chesterfield," Willis countered. "The only living cigarette with 60,000 filter dragnets."

Carella laughed. The phone rang. Willis picked it up.

"87th Squad," he said. "Detective Willis."

Carella looked up.

"What?" Willis said. "Give me the address." He scribbled something hastily on his pad. "Hold him there, we'll be right over." He hung up, opened the desk drawer and removed his holster and service revolver.

"What is it?" Carella asked.

"Doctor on 35th North. Has a man in his office with a bullet wound in his left shoulder."

A squad car was parked in front of the brownstone on 35th North when Carella and Willis arrived.

"The rookies beat us here," Willis said.

"So long as they've got him," Carella answered, and he made it sound like a prayer. A sign on the door read, "DOCTOR IS IN. RING BELL AND PLEASE BE SEATED."

"Where?" Willis asked. "On the doorstep?"

They rang the bell, opened the door, and entered the office. The office was situated off the small courtyard on the street level of the brownstone. A patrolman was seated on the long leather couch, reading a copy of Esquire. He closed the magazine when the detectives entered and said, "Patrolman Curtis, sir."

"Where's the doctor?" Carella asked.

"Inside, sir. Country is asking him some questions."

"Who's Country?"

"My partner, sir."

"Come on," Willis said. He and Carella went into the doctor's office. Country, a tall gangling boy with a shock of black hair snapped to attention when they entered.

"Goodbye, Country," Willis said drily. The patrolman eased himself toward the door and left the office.

"Dr. Russell?" Willis asked.

"Yes," Dr. Russell replied. He was a man of about fifty, with a head of hair that was silvery white, giving the lie to his age. He stood as straight as a telephone pole, broad-shouldered, immaculate in his white office tunic. He was a handsome man, and he gave an impression of great competence. For all Carella knew, he may have been a butcher, but he'd have trusted this man to cut out his heart.

"Where is he?"

"Gone," Dr. Russell said.

"How..."

"I called as soon as I saw the wound. I excused myself, went out to my private office and placed the call. When I came back, he was gone."

"Shit," Willis said. "Want to tell us from the beginning, doctor?"

"Certainly. He came in ... oh, not more than twenty minutes ago. The office was empty, unusual for this time of day, but I rather imagine people with minor ailments are curing them at the seashore." He smiled briefly. "He said he'd shot himself while cleaning his hunting rifle. I took him into the Examination Room—that's this room, gentlemen— and asked him to take off his shirt. He did."

"What happened then?"

"I examined the wound. I asked him when he had had the accident. He said it had occurred only this morning. I knew instantly that he was lying. The wound I was examining was not a fresh one. It was already highly infected. That was when I remembered the newspaper stories."

"About the cop killer?"

"Yes. I recalled having read something about the man having a pistol wound above the waist. That was when I excused myself to call you."

"Was this definitely a gunshot wound?"

"Without a doubt. It had been dressed, but very badly. I didn't examine it very closely, you understand, because I rushed off to make the call. But it seemed to me that iodine had been used as a disinfectant."

"Iodine?"

"Yes."

"But it was infected nonetheless?"

"Oh, definitely. That man is going to have to find another doctor, sooner or later."

"What did he look like?"

"Well, where should I begin?"

"How old?"

"Thirty-five or thereabouts."

"Height?"

"A little over six feet, I should say."

"Weight?"

"About one-ninety."

"Black hair?" Willis asked.

"Yes."

"Color of eyes?"

"Brown."

"Any scars, birthmarks, other identifying characteristics?"

"His face was very badly scratched."

"Did he touch anything in the office?"

"No. Wait, yes."

"What?"

"I had him sit up on the table here. When I began probing the wound, he winced and gripped the stirrups here at the foot of the table."

'This may be a break, Hal," Carella said.

"Jesus, it sounds like one. What was he wearing, Dr. Russell?"

"Black."

"Black suit?"

"Yes."

"What color shirt?"

"White. It was stained over the wound."

"Tie?"

"A striped tie. Gold and black."

"Tie clasp?"

"Yes. Some sort of design on it."

"What kind?"

"A bugle? Something like that."

"Trumpet, hunting horn, horn of plenty?"

"I don't know. I couldn't really identify it. It only stuck in my mind because it was an unusual clasp. I noticed it when he was undressing."

"What color shoes?"

"Black."

"Clean-shaven?"

"Yes. That is, you meant was he wearing a beard?"

"Yes."

"Well then, yes, he was clean-shaven. But he needed a shave."

"Uh-huh. Wearing any rings?"

"None that I noticed."

"Undershirt?'

"No undershirt."

"Can't say I blame him in this heat. Mind if I make a call, Doc?"

"Please help yourself. Do you think he's the man?"

"I hope so," Willis said. "God, I hope so."

When a man is nervous, he perspires—even if the temperature is not hovering somewhere in the nineties.

There are sweat pores on the fingertips, and the stuff they secrete contains 98.5 percent water and 0.5 to 1.5 percent solid material. This solid material breaks down to about one-third of inorganic matter—mainly salt—and two thirds of organic substances like urea, albumin and formic, butyric and acetic acids. Dust, dirt, grease cling to the secretion from a man's fingertips.

The perspiration, mixed with whatever happens to be clinging to it at the moment, leaves a filmy impression on whatever the man happens to touch.

The suspected killer happened to touch the smooth chromium surfaces of the stirrups in Dr. Russell's office.

The tech crew dusted the latent fingerprints with one of the commercial black powders. The excess powder was allowed to fall on a sheet of paper. The prints were lightly brushed with an ostrich feather. They were then photographed.

There were two good thumbprints, one for each hand where the suspect had pressed down on the top surfaces of the stirrups. There were good second-joint prints for each hand where the suspect had gripped the undersides of the stirrups.

The prints were sent to the Bureau of Identification. A thorough search was made of the files. The search proved fruitless, and the prints were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while the detectives sat back to wait.

In the meantime, a police artist went to see Dr. Russell. Listening to Dr. Russell's description, he began drawing a picture of the suspect. He made changes as Dr. Russell suggested them—"No, the nose is a little too long; yes, that's better. Try to give a little curl to his lip there, yes, yes,

that's it"—and he finally came up with a drawing which tallied with Dr. Russell's recollection of the man he had examined. The picture was sent to each metropolitan daily and to each television station hi the area, together with a verbal description of the wanted man.

All this while, the detectives waited for the F.B.I. report. They were still waiting the next day.

Willis looked at the drawing on the first page of one of the morning tabloids.

The headline screamed: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

"He's not bad-looking," Willis said.

"Pretty-Boy Krajak," Carella said.

"No, I'm serious."

"He may be handsome, but he's a son of a bitch," Carella said. "I hope his arm falls off."

"It very well might," Willis said drily.

"Where the hell's that F.B.I, report?" Carella asked edgily. He had been answering calls all morning, calls from citizens who reported having seen the killer. Each call had to be checked out, of course, but thus far the man had been seen all over the city at simultaneous times. "I thought those G-men were supposed to be fast."

"They are," Willis said.

"I m going to check with the Lieutenant."

"Go ahead," Willis said.

Carella went to the Lieutenant's door. He knocked and Byrnes called, "Come." Carella went into the office. Byrnes was on the phone. He signaled for Carella to stand by. He nodded then and said, "But Harriet, I can't see anything wrong with that."

He listened patiently.

"Yes, but..."

Carella walked to the window and stared out at the park.

"No, I can't see any reason for . . ."

Marriage, Carella thought. And then he thought of Teddy. It'll be different with us.

"Harriet, let him go," Byrnes said. "He's a good boy, and he won't get into any trouble. Look, take my word for it For God's sake, it's only an amusement park."

Byrnes sighed patiently.

"All right, then." He listened. "I'm not sure yet, honey. We're waiting for an F.B.I, report. If I'll be home, I'll call you. No, nothing special. It's too damn hot to eat, anyway. Yes, dear, "bye."

He hung up. Carella came from the window.

"Women," Byrnes said, not disagreeably. "My son wants to go out to Jollyland tonight with some of the boys. She doesn't think he should. Can't see why he wants to go there in the middle of the week. She says she's read newspaper stories about boys getting into fights with other boys at these places. For Pete's sake, it's just an amusement park. The kid is seventeen."

Carella nodded.

"If you're going to watch them every minute, they'll feel like prisoners. Okay, what are the odds on a fight starting at a place like that? Larry knows enough to avoid trouble. He's a good kid. You met him, didn't you, Steve?"

"Yes," Carella said. "He seemed very level-headed."

"Sure, that's what I told Harriet. Ah, what the hell! These women never cut the umbilical cord. We get raised by one woman, and then when we're ripe, we get turned over to another woman."

Carella smiled. "It's a conspiracy," he said.

"Sometimes I think so," Byrnes said. "But what would we do without them, huh?" He shook his head sadly, a man trapped in the labial folds of a society structure.

"Anything from the Feds yet?" Carella asked.

"No, not yet. Jesus, I m praying for a break."

"Mmmm."

"We deserve a break, don't we?" Byrnes asked. "We've worked this one right into the ground. We deserve a break."

There was a knock on the door.

"Come," Byrnes said.

Willis entered the room with an envelope. "This just arrived, sir," he said.

"F.B.I.?"

"Yes."

Byrnes took the envelope. Hastily, he tore open the flap and pulled out the folded letter.

"Hell!" he erupted. "Hell and damnation!"

"Bad?"

"They've got nothing on him!" Byrnes shouted. "God-damnit! Goddamnit to hell!"

"Not even Service prints?"

"Nothing. The son of a bitch was probably 4-F!"

"We know everything about this guy," Willis said vehemently, beginning to pace the office. "We know what he looks like, we know his height, his weight, his bloodtype, when he got his last haircut, the size of his rectal aperture!" He slammed his fist into the opposite hand. "The only thing we don't know is who the hell he is! Who is he, damnit, who is he?"

Neither Carella or Byrnes answered.

That night, a boy named Miguel Aretta was taken to Juvenile House. The police had picked him up as one of the boys who'd been missing from the roundup of The Grovers. It did not take the police long to discover that Miguel was the boy who'd zip-gunned Bert Kling.

Miguel had been carrying a zip-gun on the night that Kling got it. When a Senior Grover named Rafael "Rip" Desanga had reported to the boys that a smart guy had been around asking questions, Miguel went with them to teach the smart guy a lesson.

As it turned out, the smart guy—or the person they assumed to be the smart guy—had pulled a gun outside the bar. Miguel had taken his own piece from his pocket and burned him.

Bert Kling, of course, had not been the smart guy. He turned out to be, of all things, a cop. So Miguel Aretta was now in Juvenile House, and the people there were trying to understand what made him tick so that they could present his case fairly when it came up in Children's Court.

Miguel Aretta was fifteen years old. It could be assumed that he just didn't know any better.

The real smart guy—a reporter named Cliff Savage—was thirty-seven years old, and he should have known better.

He didn't.

Chapter TWENTY

savage was waiting for Carella when he left the precinct at 4:00 P.M. the next day.

He was wearing a brown Dupioni silk suit, a gold tie, and a brown straw with a pale yellow band. "Hello," he said, shoving himself off the side of the building.

"What can I do for you?" Carella asked.

"You're a detective, aren't you?"

"If you've got a complaint," Carella said, "take it to the desk sergeant. I'm on my way home."

"My name's Savage."

"Oh," Carella said. He regarded the reporter sourly.

"You in the fraternity, too?" Savage asked.

"Which one?"

'The Fraternity against Savage. Eeta Piecea Cliff."

"I'm Phi Beta Kappa myself," Carella said.

"Really?"

"No." He began walking toward his car. Savage fell in step with him.

"Are you sore at me, too, is what I meant," Savage said.

"You stuck your nose in the wrong place," Carella 'answered. "Because you did, a cop is in the hospital and a kid is in Juvenile House, awaiting trial. What do you want me to do, give you a medal?"

"If a kid shoots somebody, he deserves whatever he gets."

"Maybe he wouldn't've shot anybody if you'd kept your nose out of it."

"I'm a reporter. My job is getting facts."

"The lieutenant told me he'd already discussed the possibility of teen-agers being responsible for the deaths. He said he told you he considered the possibility extremely remote. But you went ahead and put your fat thumb in the pie, anyway. You realize Kling could have been killed?"

"He wasn't. Do you realize I could have been killed?" Savage said.

Carella made no comment

"If you people cooperate more with the press ..."

Carella stopped walking. "Listen," he said, "what are you doing in this neighborhood? Looking for more trouble? If any of The Grovers recognize you, we're going to have another rhubarb. Why don't you go back to your newspaper office and write a column on garbage collection?"

"Your humor doesn't..."

"I'm not trying to be funny," Carella said, "nor do I particularly feel like discussing anything with you. I just came off duty. I'm going home to shower and then I have a date with my fiancee. I'm theoretically on duty twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week, but fortunately that duty does not include extending courtesy to every stray cub reporter in town."

"Cub?" Savage was truly offended. "Now, listen ..."

"What the hell do you want from me?" Carella asked.

"I want to discuss the killings."

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"Jesus, you're a real leech, aren't you?'

"I'm a reporter, and a damned good one. Why don't you want to talk about the killings?"

"I'm perfectly willing to discuss them with anyone who knows what I'm talking about"

"I'm a good listener," Savage said.

"Sure. You turned a fine ear toward Rip Desanga."

"Okay, I made a mistake, I'm willing to admit that. I thought it was the kids, and it wasn't. We know now it was an adult. What else do we know about him? Do we know why he did it?"

"Are you going to follow me all the way home?"

"I'd prefer buying you a drink," Savage said. He looked at Carella expectantly. Carella weighed the offer.

"All right," he said.

Savage extended his hand. "My friends call me Cliff. I didn't get your name."

"Steve Carella."

They shook. "Pleased to know you. Let's get that drink."

The bar was air-conditioned, a welcome sanctuary from the stifling heat outdoors. They ordered their drinks and then sat opposite each other at the booth alongside the left-hand wall.

"All I want to know," Savage said, "is what you think."

"Do you mean me personally, or the department?"

"You, of course. I can't expect you to speak for the department."

"Is this for publication?" Carella asked.

"Hell, no. I'm just trying to jell my own ideas on it. Once this thing is broken, there'll be a lot of feature coverage. To do a good job, I want to be acquainted with every facet of the investigation."

"It'd be a little difficult for a layman to understand every facet of police investigation," Carella said.

"Of course, of course. But you can at least tell me what you think."

"Sure. Provided it's not for publication."

"Scout's honor," Savage said.

"The department doesn't like individual cops trying to glorify..."

"Not a word of this will get into print," Savage said. "Believe me."

"What do you want to know?"

"We've got the means, we've got the opportunity," Savage said. "What's the motive?"

"Every cop hi the city would like the answer to that one," Carella said.

"A nut maybe."

"Maybe."

"You don't think so?"

"No. Some of us do. I don't."

"Why not?"

"Just like that."

"Do you have a reason?"

"No, just a feeling. When you've been working on a case for any length of time, you begin to get feelings about it. I just don't happen to believe a maniac's involved here."

"What do you believe?"

"Well, I have a few ideas."

"Like what?"

"I'd rather not say right now."

"Oh, come on, Steve."

"Look, police work is like any other kind of work—except we happen to deal with crime. If you run an import-' export business, you play certain hunches and others you don't. It's the same with us. If you have a hunch, you don't go around making a million dollar deal on it until you've checked it."

"Then you do have a hunch you want to check?"

"Not even a hunch, really. Just an idea."

"What kind of an idea?"

"About motive."

"What about motive?"

Carella smiled. "You're a pretty tenacious guy, aren't you?"

"I'm a good reporter. I already told you that."

"All right, look at it this way. These men were cops. Three of them were killed in a row. What's the automatic conclusion?"

"Somebody doesn't like cops."

"Right. A cop hater."

"So?"

"Take off their uniforms. What have you got then?"

"They weren't wearing uniforms. None of them were uniform cops."

"I know. I was speaking figuratively. I meant, make them ordinary citizens. Not cops. What do you have then? Certainly not a cop hater."

"But they were cops."

"They were men first. Cops only coincidentally and secondarily."

"You feel, then, that the fact that they were cops had nothing to do with the reason they were killed."

"Maybe. That's what I want to dig into a little deeper."

"I'm not sure I understand you."

"It's this," Carella said. "We knew these men well, we worked with them every day. Cops. We knew them as cops. We didn't know them as men. They may have been killed because they were men, and not because they were cops."

"Interesting," Savage said.

"It means digging into their lives on a more personal level. It won't be fun because murder has a strange way of dragging skeletons out of the neatest closets."

"You mean, for example . . ." Savage paused. "Well, let's say Reardon was playing around with another dame, or Foster was a horse player, or Bush was taking money from a racketeer, something like that."

'To stretch the point, yes."

"And somehow, their separate activities were perhaps tied together to one person who wanted them all dead for various reasons. Is that what you're saying?"

"That's a little complicated," Carella said. "I'm not sure the deaths are connected in such a complicated way."

"But we do know the same person killed all three cops."

"Yes, we're fairly certain of that."

"Then the deaths are connected."

"Yes, of course. But perhaps . . ." Carella shrugged. "It's difficult to discuss this with you because I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about. I only have this idea, that's all. This idea that motive may go deeper than the shields these men wore."

"I see." Savage sighed. "Well, you can console yourself with the knowledge that every cop in the city probably has his own ideas on how to solve this one."

Carella nodded, not exactly understanding Savage, but not willing to get into a lengthier discussion. He glanced at his watch.

"I've got to go soon," he said. "I've got a date."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Yes."

"What's her name?"

"Teddy. Well, Theodora really."

"Theodora what?"

"Franklin."

"Nice," Savage said. "Is this a serious thing?"

"As serious as they come."

"These ideas of yours," Savage said. "About motive. Have you discussed them with your superiors?"

"Hell, no. You don't discuss every little pang of inspiration you get. You look into it, and then if you turn up anything that looks remotely promising, well, then you air the idea."

"I see. Have you discussed it with Teddy?"

"Teddy? Why, no, not yet."

"Think she'll go for it?"

Carella smiled uneasily. "She thinks I can do no wrong."

"Sounds like a wonderful girl."

"The best. And I'd better get to her before I lose her."

"Certainly," Savage said understandingly. Carella glanced at his watch again. "Where does she live?"

"Riverhead," Carella said.

"Theodora Franklin of Riverhead," Savage said.

"Yes."

"Well, I've appreciated listening to your ideas."

Carella rose. "None of that was for print, remember," he said.

"Of course not," Savage assured him.

"Thanks for the drink," Carella said.

They shook hands. Savage stayed in the booth and ordered another Tom Collins. Carella went home to shower and shave for his date with Teddy.

She was dressed resplendently when she opened the door. She stood back, waiting for him to survey her splendor. She was wearing a white linen suit, white straw pumps, a red-stoned pin on the collar of the suit, bright scarlet oval earrings picking up the scream of the pin.

"Shucks," he said, "I was hoping I'd catch you in your slip."

She made a motion to unbutton her jacket, smiling.

"We have reservations," he said.

Where? her face asked.

"Ah Lum Fong," he replied.

She nodded exuberantly.

"Where's your lipstick?" he asked.

She grinned and went to him, and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and then she clung to him as if he were leaving for Siberia in the next ten minutes.

"Come on," he said, "put on your face."

She went into the other room, applied her lipstick and emerged carrying a small red purse.

"They carry those on the Street," he said. "It's a badge of the profession," and she slapped him on the fanny as they left the apartment.

The Chinese restaurant boasted excellent food and an exotic decor. To Carella, the food alone would not have been enough. When he ate in a Chinese restaurant, he wanted it to look and feel Chinese. He did not appreciate an expanded, upholstered version of a Culver Avenue diner.

They ordered fried wonton soup, and lobster rolls, and barbecued spare ribs and Hon Shu Gai and Steak Kew and sweet and pungent pork. The wonton soup was crisp with Chinese vegetables; luscious snow peas, and water chestnuts, and mushrooms, and roots he could not have named if he'd tried. The wontons were brown and crisp, the soup itself had a rich tangy taste. They talked very little while they ate. They dug into the lobster rolls, and then they attacked the spare ribs, succulently brown.

"Do you know that Lamb thing?" he asked. "A Dissertation on..."

She nodded, and then went back to the spare ribs.

The chicken in the Hon Shu Gai was snappingly crisp. They polished off the dish. They barely had room for the Steak Kew, but they did their best with it, and when Charlie —their waiter—came to collect their dishes, he looked at them reproachfully because they had left over some of the delicious cubes of beef.

He cut a king pineapple for them in the kitchen, cut it so that the outside shell could be lifted off in one piece, exposing the ripe yellow meat beneath the prickly exterior, the fruit sliced and ready to be lifted off in long slender pieces. They drank their tea, savoring the aroma and the warmth, their stomachs full, their minds and their bodies relaxed.

"How's August nineteenth sound to you?"

Teddy shrugged.

"It's a Saturday. Would you like to get married on a Saturday?"

Yes, her eyes said.

Charlie brought them their fortune cookies and replenished the tea pot.

Carella broke open his cookie. Then, before he read the message on the narrow slip of paper, he said, "Do you know the one about the man who opened one of these in a Chinese restaurant?"

Teddy shook her head.

"It said, 'Don't eat the soup. Signed, a friend.'"

Teddy laughed and then gestured to his fortune slip. Carella read it aloud to her:

"You are the luckiest man alive. You are about to marry Theodora Franklin."

She said "Oh!" in soundless exasperation, and then took the slip from him. The slender script read: "You are good with figures."

"Your figure," he said.

Teddy smiled and broke open her cookie. Her face clouded momentarily.

"What is it?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Let me see it."

She tried to keep the fortune slip from him, but he got it out of her hand and read it.

"Leo will roar—sleep no more."

Carella stared at the printed slip. "That's a hell of a thing to put in a cookie," he said. "What does it mean?" He thought for a moment. "Oh, Leo. Leo the Lion. July 22nd to August something, isn't it?"

Teddy nodded.

"Well, the meaning here is perfectly clear then. Once we're married, you're going to have a hell of a time sleeping."

He grinned, and the worry left her eyes. She smiled, nodded, and then reached across the table for his hand.

The broken cookie rested alongside their hands, and beside that the curled fortune slip.

Leo will roar—sleep no more.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

the man's name was not Leo. The man's name was Peter. His last name was Byrnes.

He was roaring.

"What the hell kind of crap is this, Carella?"

"What?"

"Today's issue of this . . . this goddamn rag!" he shouted, pointing to the afternoon tabloid on his desk. "August 4th!"

Leo, Carella thought. "What . . . what do you mean, Lieutenant?"

"What do I mean?" Byrnes shouted. "WHAT DO I MEAN? Who the hell gave you the authority to reel off this crap to that idiot Savage?"

"What?"

"There are cops walking beats in Bethtown because they spouted off nonsense like ..."

"Savage? Let me see that..." Carella started

Byrnes flipped open the newspaper angrily. "Cop Defies Department!" he shouted. "That's the headline. COP DEFIES DEPARTMENT! What's the matter, Carella, aren't you happy here?"

"Let me see ..."

"And under that 'MAY KNOW MURDERER,' DETECTIVE SAYS."

"May know___"

"Did you tell this to Savage?"

"That I may know who the murderer is? Of course not Jesus, Pete..."

"Don't call me Pete! Here, read the goddamn story."

Carella took the newspaper. For some strange reason, his hands were trembling.

Sure enough, the story was on page four, and it was headlined:

COP DEFIES DEPARTMENT

'MAY KNOW MURDER,'

DETECTIVE SAYS

"But this is..." "Read it," Byrnes said. Carella read it.

The bar was cool and dim.

We sat opposite each other, Detective Stephen Carella and I. He toyed with his drink, and we talked of many things, but mostly we talked of murder.

"I've got an idea I know who killed those three cops," Carella said. "It's not the kind of idea you can take to your superiors, though. They wouldn't understand."

And so came the first ray of hope in the mystery which has baffled the masterminds of Homicide North and tied the hands of stubborn, opinionated Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes of the 87th Precinct.

"I can't tell you very much more about it right now," Carella said, "because I'm still digging. But this cop-hater theory is all wrong. Ifs something in the personal lives of these three men, of that I'm sure. It needs work, but we'll crack it."

So spoke Detective Carella yesterday afternoon in a bar in the heart of the Murder Belt. He is a shy, withdrawn man, a man who—in his own words—is "not seeking glory."

"Police work is like any other kind of work," he told me, "except that we deal in crime. When you've got a hunch, you dig into it. If it pans out, then you bring it to your superiors, and maybe they'll listen, and maybe they won't."

Thus far, he has confided his "hunch" only to his fiancee, a lovely young lady named Theodora Franklin, a girl from Riverhead. Miss Franklin feels that Carella can "do no wrong," and is certain he will crack the case despite the inadequate fumblings of the department to date.

"There are skeletons in the closets," Carella said. "And those skeletons point to our man. We've got to dig deeper. It's just a matter of time now."

We sat in the cool dimness of the bar, and I felt the quiet strength emanating from this man who has the courage to go ahead with his investigation in spite of the Cop-Hater

Theory which pervades the dusty minds of the men working around him.

This man will find the murderer, I thought.

This man will relieve the city of its constant fear, its dread of an unknown killer roaming the streets with a wanton .45 automatic in his blood-stained fist. This man ...

"Jesus!" Carella said.

"Yeah," Byrnes answered. "Now what about it?"

"I never said these things. I mean, not this way. And he said it wasn't for print!" Carella suddenly exploded. "Where's the phone? I'm going to sue this son of a bitch for libel! He can't get away with ..."

"Calm down," Byrnes said.

"Why'd he drag Teddy into this? Does he want to make her a sitting duck for that stupid bastard with the .45? Is he out of his mind?"

"Calm down," Byrnes repeated.

"Calm down? I never said I knew who the murderer was! I never..."

"What did you say?"

"I only said I had an idea that I wanted to work on."

"And what's the idea?"

"That maybe this guy wasn't after cops at all. Maybe he was just after men. And maybe not even that. Maybe he was just after one man."

"Which one?"

"How the hell do I know? Why'd he mention Teddy? Jesus, what's the matter with this guy?"

"Nothing that a head doctor couldn't cure," Byrnes said.

"Listen, I want to go up to see Teddy. God knows . . ."

"What time is it?" Byrnes asked.

Carella looked at the wall clock. "Six-fifteen."

"Wait until six-thirty. Havilland will be back from supper by then."

"If I ever meet this guy Savage again," Carella promised, "I'm going to rip him in half."

"Or at least give him a speeding ticket," Byrnes commented.

The man in the black suit stood outside the apartment door, listening. A copy of the afternoon newspaper stuck up from the right-hand pocket of his jacket. His left shoulder throbbed with pain, and the weight of the .45 automatic tugged at the other pocket of his jacket, so that—favoring the wound, bearing the weight of the gun—he leaned slightly to his left while he listened.

There was no sound from within the apartment.

He had read the name very carefully in the newspaper, Theodora Franklin, and then he had checked the Riverhead directory and come up with the address. He wanted to talk to this girl. He wanted to find out how much Carella knew. He had to find out.

She's very quiet in there, he thought. What's she doing?

Cautiously, he tried the door knob. He wiggled it slowly from side to side. The door was locked.

He heard footsteps. He tried to back away from the door too late. He reached for the gun in his pocket. The door was opening, wide, wider.

The girl stood there, surprised. She was a pretty girl, small, dark-haired, wide brown eyes. She wore a white chenille robe. The robe was damp in spots. He assumed she had just come from the shower. Her eyes went to his face, and then to the gun in his hand. Her mouth opened, but no sound came from it. She tried to slam the door, but he rammed his foot into the wedge and then shoved it back.

She moved away from him, deeper into the room. He closed the door and locked it

"Miss Franklin?" he asked.

She nodded, terrified. She had seen the drawing on the front pages of all the newspapers, had seen it broadcast on all the television programs. There was no mistake, this was the man Steve was looking for.

"Let's have a little talk, shall we?" he asked.

His voice was a nice voice, smooth, almost suave. He was a good-looking man, why had he killed those cops? Why would a man like this ...?

"Did you hear me?" he asked.

She nodded. She could read his lips, could understand everything he said, but...

"What does your boyfriend know?" he asked.

He held the .45 loosely, as if he were accustomed to its lethal power now, as if he considered it a toy more than a dangerous weapon.

"What's the matter, you scared?"

She touched her hands to her lips, pulled them away in a gesture of futility.

"What?"

She repeated the gesture.

"Come on," he said, "talk, for Christ's sake! You're not that scared!"

Again, she repeated the gesture, shook her head this time. He watched her curiously.

"I'll be damned," he said at last. "A dummy!" He began laughing. The laugh filled the apartment, reverberating from the walls. "A dummy! If that don't take the cake! A dummy!" His laughter died. He studied her carefully. "You're not trying to pull something, are you?"

She shook her head vigorously. Her hands went to the opening of her robe, clutching the chenille to her more tightly.

"Now this has definite advantages, doesn't it?" he said, grinning. "You can't scream, you can't use the phone, you can't do a damned thing, can you?"

Teddy swallowed, watching him.

"What does Carella know?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"The paper said he's got a lead. Does he know about me? Does he have any idea who I am?"

Again, she shook her head.

"I don't believe you."

She nodded, trying to convince him that Steve knew nothing. What paper was he referring to? What did he mean? She spread her hands wide, indicating innocence, hoping he would understand.

He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed the newspaper to her.

"Page four," he said. "Read it. I've got to sit down. This goddamn shoulder ..."

He sat, the gun leveled at her. She opened the paper and read the story, shaking her head as she read.

"Well?" he asked.

She kept shaking her head. No, this is not true. No, Steve Would never say things like these. Steve would . ..

"What'd he tell you?" the man asked.

Her eyes opened wide with pleading. Nothing, he told me nothing.

"The newspaper says ..."

She hurled the paper to the floor.

"Lies, huh?"

Yes, she nodded.

His eyes narrowed. "Newspapers don't lie," he said.

They do, they do!

"When's he coming here?"

She stood motionless, controlling her face, not wanting her face to betray anything to the man with the gun.

"Is he coming?"

She shook her head.

"You're lying. It's all over your face. He's coming here, isn't he?"

She bolted for the door. He caught her arm and flung her back across the room. The robe pulled back over her legs when she fell to the floor. She pulled it together quickly and stared up at him.

"Don't try that again," he said.

Her breath came heavily now. She sensed a coiled spring within this man, a spring which would unleash itself at the door the moment Steve opened it. But he'd said he would not be there until midnight. He had told her that, and there were a lot of hours between now and midnight. In that time...

"You just get out of the shower?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Those are good legs," he said, and she felt his eyes on her. "Dames," he said philosophically. "What've you got on under that robe?"

Her eyes widened.

He began laughing. "Just what I thought. Smart. Good way to beat the heat. When's Carella coming?"

She did not answer.

"Seven, eight, nine? Is he on duty today?" He watched her. "Nothing from you, huh? What's he got, the four to midnight? Sure, otherwise he'd probably be with you right this minute. Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, we got a long wait. Anything to drink in this place?"

Teddy nodded.

"What've you got? Gin? Rye? Bourbon?" He watched her. "Gin? You got tonic? No, huh? Club soda? Okay, mix me a Collins. Hey, where you going?"

Teddy gestured to the kitchen.

"I'll come with you," he said. He followed her into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and took out an opened bottle of club soda.

"Haven't you got a fresh one?" he asked. Her back was to him, and so she could not read his lips. He seized her shoulder and swung her around. His hand did not leave her shoulder.

"I asked you if you had a fresh bottle," he said.

She nodded and bent, taking an unopened bottle from the lowest shelf of the refrigerator. She took lemons from the fruit drawer, and then went to the cupboard for the bottle of gin.

"Dames," he said again.

She poured a double shot of gin into a tall glass. She spooned sugar into the glass, and then she went to one of the drawers.

"Hey!"

He saw the knife in her hand.

"Don't get ideas with that. Just slice the lemon."

She sliced the lemon and squeezed both halves into the glass. She poured club soda until the glass was three-quarters full, and then she went back to the refrigerator for the ice cubes. When the drink was finished, she handed it to him.

"Make one for yourself," he said.

She shook her head.

"I said make one for yourself! I don't like to drink alone."

Patiently, wearily, she made herself a drink.

"Come on. Back in the living room."

They went into the living room, and he sat in an easy chair, wincing as he adjusted himself so that his shoulder was comfortable.

"When the knock comes on that door," he said, "you just sit tight, understand? Go unlock it now."

She went to the door and unlocked it. And now, knowing that the door was open, knowing that Steve would enter and be faced with a blazing .45, she felt fear crawl into her head like a nest of spiders.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

She shrugged. She walked back into the room and sat opposite him, facing the door.

"This is a good drink," he said. "Come on, drink."

She sipped at the Collins, her mind working ahead to the moment of Steve's arrival.

"I'm going to kill him, you know," he said.

She watched him, her eyes wide.

"Won't make any difference now, anyway, will it? One cop more or less. Make it look a little better, don't you think?"

She was puzzled, and the puzzlement showed on her face.

"It's the best way," he explained. "If he knows something, well, it won't do to have him around. And if he doesn't know anything, it'll round out the picture." He struggled in the chair. "Jesus, I've got to get this shoulder fixed. How'd you like that lousy doctor? That was something, wasn't it? I thought they were supposed to be healers."

He talks the way anyone does, she thought. Except that he talks so casually of death. He is going to kill Steve.

"We were figuring on Mexico, anyway. Going to leave this afternoon, until your boyfriend came up with his bright idea. We'll take off in the morning, though. Soon as I take care of this." He paused. "Do you suppose I can get a good doctor in Mexico? Jesus, the things a guy will do, huh?" He watched her face carefully. "You ever been in love?"

She studied him, puzzled, confused. He did not seem like a killer. She nodded.

"Who with? This cop?"

She nodded again.

"Well, that's a shame." He seemed sincerely sorry. "It's a damn shame, honey, but what hasta be hasta be. There's no other way, you can see that, can't you? I mean, there was no other way right from the start, from the minute I started this thing. And when you start something, you've got to see it through right to the finish. It's a matter of survival now, you realize that? Jesus, the things a guy will do. Well, you know." He paused. "You'd kill for him, wouldn't you?"

She hesitated.

"To keep him, you'd kill for him, wouldn't you?" he repeated.

She nodded.

"So? So there." He smiled. "I'm not a professional, you know. I'm a mechanic. That's my line. I'm a damn good mechanic, too. Think I'll be able to get work in Mexico?"

Teddy shrugged.

"Sure, they must have cars down there. They've got cars everywhere. Then, later, when things have cooled down, we'll come back to the States. Hell, things should cool down sooner or later. But what I'm trying to tell you, I'm not a professional killer, so don't get that idea. I'm just a regular guy."

Her eyes did not believe him.

"No, huh? Well, I'm telling you. Sometimes, there's no other way out. If you see something's hopeless, and somebody explains to you where there's some hope, okay, you take it. I never harmed nobody until I killed those cops. You think I wanted to kill them? Survival, that's all. Some things, you've got to do. Agh, what the hell do you understand? You're just a dummy."

She sat silent, watching him.

"A woman gets under your skin. Some women are like that. Listen, I've been around. I've been around plenty. I had me more dames than you could count. But this one— different. Different right from the beginning. She just got under my skin. Right under it. When it gets you like that, you can't eat, you can't sleep, nothing. You just think about her all day long. And what can you do when you realize you can't really have her unless . . . well . . . unless you . . . hell, didn't she ask him for a divorce? Is it my fault he was a stubborn son of a bitch? Well, he's still stubborn— only now he's dead."

Teddy's eyes moved from his face. They covered the door behind him, and then dropped to the doorknob.

"And he took two of his pals with him." He stared into his glass. "Those are the breaks. He should've listened to reason. A woman like her . . . Jesus, you'd do anything for a woman like her. Anything! Just being in the same room with her, you want to ..."

Teddy watched the knob with fascination. She rose suddenly. She brought back her glass and then threw it at him. It grazed his forehead, the liquid splashing out of the glass and cascading over his shoulder. He leaped to his feet, his face twisted in fury, the .45 pointed at her.

"You stupid bitch!" he bellowed. "Why the hell did you do that?"

Chapter TWENTY-TWO

carella left the precinct at 6:30 on the button. Havilland had not yet come back from supper, but he could wait no longer. He did not want to leave Teddy alone in that apartment, not after the fool stunt Savage had pulled.

He drove to Riverhead quickly. He ignored traffic lights and full stop signs. He ignored everything. There was an all-consuming thought in his mind, and that thought included a man with a .45 and a girl with no tongue.

When he reached her apartment building, he glanced up at her window. The shades were not drawn. The apartment looked very quiet. He breathed a little more easily, and then entered the building. He climbed the steps, his heart pounding. He knew he shouldn't be alarmed but he could not shake the persistent feeling that Savage's column had invited danger for Teddy.

He stopped outside her door. He could hear the persistent drone of what sounded like the radio going inside. He reached for the knob. In his usual manner, he twisted it slowly from side to side, waiting for her footsteps, knowing she would come to the door the moment she saw his signal.

He heard the sound of a chair scraping back and then someone shouted, "You stupid bitch! Why the hell did you do that?"

His brain came alive. He reached for his .38 and snapped the door open with his other hand. The man turned.

"You ... I" he shouted, and the .45 bucked in his hand. Carella fired low, dropping to the floor the instant he entered the room. His first two shots took the man in the thigh. The man fell face forward, the .45 pitching out of his fist. Carella kicked back the hammer on the .38, waiting. "You bastard," the man on the floor said. "You bastard." Carella got to his feet. He picked up the .45 and stuck it into his back pocket.

"Get up," he said. "You all right, Teddy?" Teddy nodded. She was breathing heavily, watching the man on the floor.

"Thanks for the warning," Carella said. He turned to the man again. "Get up!"

"I can't, you bastard. Why'd you shoot me? For Christ's sake, why'd you shoot me?"

"Why'd you shoot three cops?" The man went silent. "What's your name?" Carella asked.

"Mercer. Paul Mercer."

"Don't you like cops?"

"I love them."

"What's the story then?"

"I suppose you're going to check my gun with what you've already got."

"Damn right," Carella said. "You haven't got a chance, Mercer."

"She put me up to it," Mercer said, a scowl on his dark face. "She's the real murderer. All I done was pull the trigger. She said we had to kill him, said it was the only way. We threw the others in just to make it look good, just to make it look as if a cop hater was loose. But it was her idea. Why should I take the rap alone?"

"Whose idea?" Carella asked.

"Alice's," Mercer said. "You see ... we wanted to make it look like a cop hater. We wanted ..."

"It was," Carella said.

When they brought Alice Bush in, she was dressed in grey, a quiet grey. She sat in the Squad Room, crossing her legs.

"Do you have a cigarette, Steve?" she asked.

Carella gave her one. He did not light it for her. She sat with the cigarette dangling from her lips until it was apparent she would have to light it herself. Unruffled, she struck a match.

"What about it?" Carella asked.

"What about it?" she repeated, shrugging. "It's all over, isn't it?"

"You must have really hated him. You must have hated him like poison."

"You're directing," Alice said. "I'm only the star."

"Don't get glib, Alice!" Carella said angrily. "I've never hit a woman in my life, but I swear to God ..."

"Relax," she told him. "It's all over. You'll get your gold star, and then you'll..."

"Alice..."

"What the hell do you want me to do? Break down and cry? I hated him, all right? I hated his big, pawing hands and I hated his stupid red hair, and I hated everything about him, all right?"

"Mercer said you'd asked for a divorce. Is that true?"

"No, I didn't ask for a divorce. Hank would've never agreed to one."

"Why didn't you give him a chance?"

"What for? Did he ever give me a chance? Cooped up in that goddamn apartment, waiting for him to come off some burglary or some knifing or some mugging? What kind of life is that for a woman?"

"You knew he was a cop when you married him."

Alice didn't answer.

"You could've asked for a divorce, Alice. You could've tried."

"I didn't want to, damnit.I wanted him dead."

"Well, you've got him dead. Him and two others. You must be tickled now."

Alice smiled suddenly. "I'm not too worried, Steve."

"No?"

"There have to be some men on the jury." She paused. "Men like me."

There were, in fact, eight men on the jury.

The jury brought in a verdict in six minutes flat.

Mercer was sobbing as the jury foreman read off the verdict and the judge gave sentence. Alice listened to the judge with calm indifference, her shoulders thrown back, her head erect.

The jury had found them both guilty of murder in the first degree, and the judge sentenced them to death in the electric chair.

On August nineteenth, Stephen Carella and Theodora Franklin listened to their own sentence.

"Do either of you know of any reason why you both should not be legally joined in marriage, or if there be any present who can show any just cause why these parties should not be legally joined together, let him now speak or hereafter hold his peace."

Lieutenant Byrnes held his peace. Detective Hal Willis said nothing. The small gathering of friends and relatives watched, dewy-eyed.

The city clerk turned to Carella.

"Do you, Stephen Louis Carella, take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife to live together in the state of matrimony? Will you love, honor and keep her as a faithful man is bound to do, in health, sickness, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others keep you alone unto her as long as you both shall live?"

"Yes," Carella said. "Yes, I will. I do. Yes."

"Do you, Theodora Franklin, take this man as your lawfully wedded husband to live together in the state of matrimony? Will you love, honor, and cherish him as a faithful woman is bound to do, in health, sickness, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others keep you alone unto him as long as you both shall live?"

Teddy nodded. There were tears in her eyes, but she could not keep the ecstatic smile off her face.

"For as you both have consented in wedlock and have acknowledged it before this company, I do by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of this state now pronounce you husband and wife. And may God bless your union."

Carella took her in his arms and kissed her. The clerk smiled. Lieutenant Byrnes cleared his throat. Willis looked up at the ceiling. The clerk kissed Teddy when Carella released her. Byrnes kissed her. Willis kissed her. All the male relatives and friends came up to kiss her.

Carella smiled idiotically.

"You hurry back," Byrnes said to him.

"Hurry back? I'm going on my honeymoon, Pete!"

"Well, hurry anyway. How are we going to run that precinct without you? You're the only cop in the city who has the courage to buck the decisions of stubborn, opinionated Detective-Lieutenant Byrnes of the ..."

"Oh, go to hell," Carella said, smiling.

Willis shook his hand. "Good luck, Steve. She's a wonderful gal."

"Thank you, Hal."

Teddy came to him. He put his arm around her.

"Well," he said, "let's go."

They went out of the room together.

Byrnes stared after them wistfully.

"He's a good cop," he said.

"Yeah," Willis answered.

"Come on," Byrnes said, "let's go see what's brewing back at the house."

They went down into the street together.

"Want to get a paper," Byrnes said. He stopped at a newsstand and picked up a copy of Savage's tabloid. The trial news had been crowded right off the front pages. There was more important news.

The headlines simply read:

HEAT WAVE BREAKS! HAPPY DAY!

-THE END-