Fuzz

Chapter 7

Nobody likes to work on Saturday.

There’s something obscene about it, it goes against the human grain. Saturday is the day before the day of rest, a good time to stomp on all those pressures that have been building Monday to Friday. Given a nice blustery rotten March day with the promise of snow in the air and the city standing expectantly monolithic, stoic, and solemn, given such a peach of a Saturday, how nice to be able to start a cannel coal fire in the fireplace of your three-room apartment and smoke yourself out of the joint. Or, lacking a fireplace, what better way to utilize Saturday than by pouring yourself a stiff hooker of bourbon and curling up with a blonde or a book, spending your time with War and Peace or Whore and Piece, didn’t Shakespeare invent some of his best puns on Saturday, drunk with a wench in his first best bed?

Saturday is a quiet day. It can drive you to distraction with its prospects of leisure time, it can force you to pick at the coverlet wondering what to do with all your sudden freedom, it can send you wandering through the rooms in search of occupation while moodily contemplating the knowledge that the loneliest night of the week is fast approaching.

Nobody likes to work on Saturday because nobody else is working on Saturday.

Except cops.

Grind, grind, grind, work, work, work, driven by a sense of public-mindedness and dedication to humanity, law enforcement officers are forever at the ready, alert of mind, swift of body, noble of purpose.

Andy Parker was asleep in the swivel chair behind his desk.

“Where is everybody?” one of the painters said.

“What?” Parker said. “Huh?” Parker said, and sat bolt upright, and glared at the painter and then washed his huge hand over his face and said, “What the hell’s the matter with you, scaring a man that way?”

“We’re leaving,” the first painter said.

“We’re finished,” the second painter said.

“We already got all our gear loaded on the truck, and we wanted to say good-by to everybody.”

“So where is everybody?”

“There’s a meeting in the lieutenant’s office,” Parker said.

“We’ll just pop in and say good-by,” the first painter said.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Parker said.

“Why not?”

“They’re discussing homicide. It’s not wise to pop in on people when they’re discussing homicide.”

“Not even to say good-by?”

“You can say good-by to me,” Parker said.

“It wouldn’t be the same thing,” the first painter said.

“So then hang around and say good-by when they come out. They should be finished before twelve. In fact, they got to be finished before twelve.”

“Yeah, but we’re finished now,” the second painter said.

“Can’t you find a few things you missed?” Parker suggested. “Like, for example, you didn’t paint the typewriters, or the bottle on the water cooler, or our guns. How come you missed our guns? You got green all over everything else in the goddamn place.”

“You should be grateful,” the first painter said. “Some people won’t work on Saturday at all, even at time and a half.”

So both painters left in high dudgeon, and Parker went back to sleep in the swivel chair behind his desk.

“I don’t know what kind of a squad I’m running here,” Lieutenant Byrnes said, “when two experienced detectives can blow a surveillance, one by getting made first crack out of the box, and the other by losing his man; that’s a pretty good batting average for two experienced detectives.”

“I was told the suspect didn’t have a car,” Meyer said. “I was told he had taken a train the night before.”

“That’s right, he did,” Kling said.

“I had no way of knowing a woman would be waiting for him in a car,” Meyer said.

“So you lost him,” Byrnes said, “which might have been all right if

the man had gone home last night. But O’Brien was stationed outside the La Bresca house in Riverhead, and the man never showed, which means we don’t know where he is today, now do we? We don’t know where a prime suspect is on the day the deputy mayor is supposed to get killed.”

“No, sir,” Meyer said, “we don’t know where La Bresca is.”

“Because you lost him.”

“I guess so, sir.”

“Well, how would you revise that statement, Meyer?”

“I wouldn’t, sir. I lost him.”

“Yes, very good, I’ll put you in for a commendation.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t get flip, Meyer.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“This isn’t a goddamn joke here, I don’t want Scanlon to wind up with two holes in his head the way Cowper did.”

“No, sir, neither do I.”

“Okay, then learn for Christ’s sake how to tail a person, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now what about this other man you say La Bresca spent time with in conversation, what was his name?”

“Calucci, sir. Peter Calucci.”

“Did you check him out?”

“Yes, sir, last night before I went home. Here’s the stuff we got from the B.C.I.”

Meyer placed a manila envelope on Byrnes’ desk, and then stepped back to join the other detectives ranged in a military line before the desk. None of the men was smiling. The lieutenant was in a lousy mood, and somebody was supposed to come up with fifty thousand dollars before noon, and the possibility existed that the deputy mayor would soon be dispatched to that big City Hall in the sky, so nobody was smiling. The lieutenant reached into the envelope and pulled out a photocopy of a fingerprint card, glanced at it cursorily, and then pulled out a photocopy of Calucci’s police record.

Byrnes read the sheet, and then said, “When did he get out?”

“He was a bad apple. He applied for parole after serving a third of the sentence, was denied, and applied every year after that. He finally made it in seven.”

Byrnes looked at the sheet again.

IDENTIFICATION BUREAU

NAME Peter Vincent Calucci

IDENTIFICATION JACKET NUMBER P 421904

ALIAS “Calooch” “Cooch” “Kook”

COLOR White

RESIDENCE 336 South 91st Street, Isola

DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1938 AGE 22

BIRTHPLACE Isola

HEIGHT 5’9” WEIGHT 156 HAIR Brown EYES Brown

COMPLEXION Swarthy OCCUPATION Construction worker

SCARS AND TATTOOS Appendectomy scar, no tattoos.

ARRESTED BY: Patrolman Henry Butler

DETECTIVE DIVISION NUMBER: 63-R1-1605-1960

DATE OF ARREST 3/14/60 PLACE 812 North 65 St., Isola

CHARGE Robbery

BRIEF DETAILS OF CRIME Calucci entered gasoline station

at 812 North 65 Street at or about midnight, threatened to shoot

attendant if he did not open safe. Attendant said he did not know

combination, Calucci cocked revolver and was about to fire when

patrolman Butler of 63rd Precinct came upon scene and apprehended

him.

PREVIOUS RECORD None

INDICTED Criminal Courts, March 15, 1960.

FINAL CHARGE Robbery in first degree, Penal Law 2125

DISPOSITION Pleaded guilty 7/8/60, sentenced to ten years at Castleview Prison.

“What’s he been doing?” Byrnes asked.

“Construction work.”

“That how he met La Bresca?”

“Calucci’s parole officer reports that his last job was with Abco Construction, and a call to the company listed La Bresca as having worked there at the same time.”

“I forget, does this La Bresca have a record?”

“No, sir.”

“Has Calucci been clean since he got out?”

“According to his parole officer, yes, sir.”

“Now who’s this person ‘Dom’ who called La Bresca Thursday night?”

“We have no idea, sir.”

“Because La Bresca tipped to your tailing him, isn’t that right, Kling?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right, sir.”

“Is Brown still on that phone tap?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you tried any of our stoolies?”

“No, sir, not yet.”

“Well, when the hell do you propose to get moving? We’re supposed to deliver fifty thousand dollars by twelve o’clock. It’s now a quarter after ten, when the hell …”

“Sir, we’ve been trying to get a line on Calucci. His parole officer gave us an address, and we sent a man over, but his landlady says he hasn’t been there since early yesterday morning.”

“Of course not!” Byrnes shouted. “The two of them are probably shacked up with that blond woman, whoever the hell she was, planning how to murder Scanlon when we fail to deliver the payoff money. Get Danny Gimp or Fats Donner, find out if they know a fellow named Dom who dropped a bundle on a big fight two weeks ago. Who the hell was fighting two weeks ago, anyway? Was that the championship fight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, get cracking. Does anybody use Gimp besides Carella?”

“No, sir.”

“Who uses Donner?”

“I do, sir.”

“Then get him right away, Willis.”

“If he’s not in Florida, sir. He usually goes south in the winter.”

“Goddamn stool pigeons go south,” Byrnes grumbled, “and we’re

stuck here with a bunch of maniacs trying to kill people. All right, go on, Willis, get moving.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said, and left the office.

“Now what about this other possibility, this deaf man thing? Jesus Christ, I hope it’s not him, I hope this is La Bresca and Calucci and the blond bimbo who drove him clear out of sight last night, Meyer …”

“Yes, sir …”

“… and not that deaf bastard again. I’ve talked to the commissioner on this, and I’ve also talked to the deputy mayor and the mayor, and we’re agreed that paying the fifty thousand dollars is out of the question. We’re to try apprehending whoever picks up that lunch pail and see if we can’t get a lead this time. And we’re to provide protection for Scanlon and that’s all for now. So I want you two to arrange the drop, and saturation coverage of that bench, and I want a suspect brought in here today, and I want him questioned till he’s blue in the face, have a lawyer ready and waiting for him in case he screams Miranda-Escobedo, I want a lead today, have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Meyer said.

“Yes, sir,” Kling said.

“You think you can set up the drop and cover without fouling it up like you fouled up the surveillance?”

“Yes, sir, we can handle it.”

“All right, then get going, and bring me some meat on this goddamn case.”

“Yes, sir,” Kling and Meyer said together, and then went out of the office.

“Now what’s this about a junkie being in that room with the killer?” Byrnes asked Hawes.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, what’s your idea, Cotton?”

“My idea is he got her in there to make sure she’d be stoned when he started shooting, that’s my idea, sir.”

“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” Byrnes said. “Get the hell out of here, go help Meyer and Kling, go call the hospital, find out how Carella’s doing, go set up another plant for those two punks who beat him up, go do something, for Christ’s sake!”

“Yes, sir,” Hawes said, and went out into the squadroom.

Andy Parker, awakened by the grumbling of the other men, washed his hand over his face, blew his nose, and then said, “The painters said to tell you good-by.”

“Good riddance,” Meyer said.

“Also, you got a call from the D.A.’s office.”

“Who from?”

“Rollie Chabrier.”

“When was this?”

“Half-hour ago, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you put it through?”

“While you were in there with the loot? No, sir.”

“I’ve been waiting for this call,” Meyer said, and immediately dialed Chabrier’s number.

“Mr. Chabrier’s office,” a bright female voice said.

“Bernice, this is Meyer Meyer up at the 87th. I hear Rollie called me a little while ago.”

“That’s right,” Bernice said.

“Would you put him on, please?”

“He’s gone for the day,” Bernice said.

“Gone for the day? It’s only a little after ten.”

“Well,” Bernice said, “nobody likes to work on Saturday.”

The black lunch pail containing approximately fifty thousand scraps of newspaper was placed in the center of the third bench on the Clinton Street footpath into Grover Park by Detective Cotton Hawes, who was wearing thermal underwear and two sweaters and a business suit and an overcoat and ear muffs. Hawes was an expert skier, and he had skied on days when the temperature at the base was four below zero and the temperature at the summit was thirty below, had skied on days when his feet went and his hands went and he boomed the mountain non-stop not for fun or sport but just to get near the fire in the base lodge before he shattered into a hundred brittle pieces. But he had never been this cold before. It was bad enough to be working on Saturday, but it was indecent to be working when the weather threatened to gelatinize a man’s blood.

Among the other people who were braving the unseasonable winds and temperatures that Saturday were:

(1) A pretzel salesman at the entrance to the Clinton Street footpath.

(2) Two nuns saying their beads on the second bench into the park.

(3) A passionate couple necking in a sleeping bag on the grass behind the third bench.

(4) A blind man sitting on the fourth bench, patting his seeing eye German shepherd and scattering bread crumbs to the pigeons.

The pretzel salesman was a detective named Stanley Faulk, recruited from the 88th across the park, a man of fifty-eight who wore a gray handlebar mustache as his trademark. The mustache made it quite simple to identify him when he was working in his own territory, thereby diminishing his value on plants. But it also served to strike terror into the hearts of hoods near and wide, in much the same way that the green-and-white color combination of a radio motor patrol car is supposed to frighten criminals and serve as a deterrent. Faulk wasn’t too happy about being called into service for the 87th on a day like this one, but he was bundled up warmly in several sweaters over which was a black cardigan-type candy store-owner sweater over which he had put on a white apron. He was standing behind a cart that displayed pretzels stacked on long round sticks. A walkie-talkie was set into the top of the cart.

The two nuns saying their beads were Detectives Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling, and they were really saying what a son of a bitch Byrnes had been to bawl them out that way in front of Hawes and Willis, embarrassing them and making them feel very foolish.

“I feel very foolish right now,” Meyer whispered.

“How come?” Kling whispered.

“I feel like I’m in drag,” Meyer whispered.

The passionate couple assignment had been the choice assignment, and Hawes and Willis had drawn straws for it. The reason it was so choice was that the other half of the passionate couple was herself quite choice, a police-woman named Eileen Burke, with whom Willis had worked on a mugging case many years back. Eileen had red hair and green eyes, Eileen had long legs, sleek and clean, full-calved, tapering to slender ankles, Eileen had very good breasts, and whereas Eileen was much taller than Willis (who only barely scraped past the five-foot-eight height requirement), he did not mind at all because big girls always seemed attracted to him, and vice versa.

“We’re supposed to be kissing,” he said to Eileen, and held her close in the warm sleeping bag.

“My lips are getting chapped,” she said.

“Your lips are very nice,” he said.

“We’re supposed to be here on business,” Eileen said.

“Mmm,” he answered.

“Get your hand off my behind,” she said.

“Oh, is that your behind?” he asked.

“Listen,” she said.

“I hear it,” he said. “Somebody’s coming. You’d better kiss me.”

She kissed him. Willis kept one eye on the bench. The person passing was a governess wheeling a baby carriage, God knew who would send an infant out on a day when the glacier was moving south. The woman and the carriage passed. Willis kept kissing Detective 2nd/Grade Eileen Burke.

“Mm frick sheb bron,” Eileen mumbled.

“Mmm?” Willis mumbled.

Eileen pulled her mouth away and caught her breath. “I said I think she’s gone.”

“What’s that?” Willis asked suddenly.

“Do not be afraid, guapa, it is only my pistol,” Eileen said, and laughed.

“I meant on the path. Listen.”

They listened.

Someone else was approaching the bench.

From where Patrolman Richard Genero sat in plain-clothes on the fourth bench, wearing dark glasses and patting the head of the German shepherd at his feet, tossing crumbs to the pigeons, wishing for summer, he could clearly see the young man who walked rapidly to the third bench, picked up the lunch pail, looked swiftly over his shoulder, and began walking not out of the park, but deeper into it.

Genero didn’t know quite what to do at first.

He had been pressed into duty only because there was a shortage of available men that afternoon (crime prevention being an arduous and difficult task on any given day, but especially on Saturday), and he had been placed in the position thought least vulnerable, it being assumed the man who picked up the lunch pail would immediately reverse direction and head out of the park again, onto Grover Avenue, where Faulk the pretzel man and Hawes, parked in his own car at the curb, would immediately collar him. But the suspect was coming into the park instead, heading for Genero’s bench, and Genero was a fellow who didn’t care very much for violence, so he sat there wishing he was home in bed, with his mother serving him hot minestrone and singing old Italian arias.

The dog at his feet had been trained for police work, and Genero had been taught a few hand signals and voice signals in the squadroom before heading out for his vigil on the fourth bench, but he was also afraid of dogs, especially big dogs, and the idea of giving this animal a kill command that might possibly be misunderstood filled Genero with fear and trembling. Suppose he gave the command and the dog leaped for his own jugular rather than for the throat of the young man who was perhaps three feet away now and walking quite rapidly, glancing over his shoulder every now and again? Suppose he did that and this beast tore him to shreds, what would his mother say to that? che bella cosa, you hadda to become a police, hah?

Willis, in the meantime, had slid his walkie-talkie up between Eileen Burke’s breasts and flashed the news to Hawes, parked in his own car on Grover Avenue, good place to be when your man is going the other way. Willis was now desperately trying to lower the zipper on the bag, which zipper seemed to have become somehow stuck. Willis didn’t mind being stuck in a sleeping bag with someone like Eileen Burke, who wiggled and wriggled along with him as they attempted to extricate themselves, but he suddenly fantasied the lieutenant chewing him out the way he had chewed out Kling and Meyer this morning and so he really was trying to lower that damn zipper while entertaining the further fantasy that Eileen Burke was beginning to enjoy all this adolescent tumbling. Genero, of course, didn’t know that Hawes had been alerted, he only knew that the suspect was abreast of him now, and passing the bench now, and moving swiftly beyond the bench now, so he got up and first took off the sun-glasses, and then unbuttoned the third button of his coat the way he had seen detectives do on television, and then reached in for his revolver and then shot himself in the leg.

The suspect began running.

Genero fell to the ground and the dog licked his face.

Willis got out of the sleeping bag and Eileen Burke buttoned her blouse and her coat and then adjusted her garters, and Hawes came running into the park and slipped on a patch of ice near the third bench and almost broke his neck.

“Stop, police!” Willis shouted.

And, miracle of miracles, the suspect stopped dead in his tracks and waited for Willis to approach him with his gun in his hand and lipstick all over his face.

The suspect’s name was Alan Parry.

They advised him of his rights and he agreed to talk to them without a lawyer, even though a lawyer was present and waiting for him in case he demanded one.

“Where do you live, Alan?” Willis asked.

“Right around the corner. I know you guys. I see you guys around all the time. Don’t you know me? I live right around the corner.”

“You make him?” Willis asked the other detectives.

They all shook their heads. They were standing around him in a loose circle, the pretzel man, two nuns, the pair of lovers, and the big redhead with a white streak in his hair and a throbbing ankle in his thermal underwear.

“Why’d you run, Alan?” Willis asked.

“I heard a shot. In this neighborhood, when you hear shooting, you run.”

“Who’s your partner?”

“What partner?”

“The guy who’s in this with you.”

“In what with me?”

“The murder plot.”

“The what?”

“Come on, Alan, you play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.”

“Hey, man, you got the wrong customer,” Parry said.

“How were you going to split the loot, Alan?”

“What loot?”

“The loot in that lunch pail.”

“Listen, I never seen that lunch pail before in my life.”

“There’s thirty thousand dollars in that lunch pail,” Willis said, “now come on, Alan, you know that, stop playing it cozy.”

Parry either avoided the trap, or else did not know there was supposed to be fifty thousand dollars in the black pail he had lifted from the bench. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know nothing about no loot, I was asked to pick up the pail, and I done it.”

“Who asked you?”

“A big blond guy wearing a hearing aid.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Willis said.

The cue was one the detectives of the 87th had used many times before in interrogating suspects, and it was immediately seized upon by Meyer, who said, “Take it easy, Hal,” the proper response, the response that told Willis they were once again ready to assume antagonistic roles. In the charade that would follow, Willis would play the tough bastard out to hang a phony rap on poor little Alan Parry, while Meyer would play the sympathetic father figure. The other detectives (including Faulk of the 88th, who was familiar with the ploy and had used it often enough himself in his own squadroom) would serve as a sort of nodding Greek chorus, impartial and objective.

Without even so much as a glance at Meyer, Willis said, “What do you mean, take it easy? This little punk has been lying from the minute we got him up here.”

“Maybe there really was a tall blond guy with a hearing aid,” Meyer said. “Give him a chance to tell us, will you?”

“Sure, and maybe there was a striped elephant with pink polka dots,” Willis said. “Who’s your partner, you little punk?”

“I don’t have no partner!” Parry said. Plaintively, he said to Meyer, “Will you please tell this guy I ain’t got a partner?”

“Calm down, Hal, will you?” Meyer said. “Let’s hear it, Alan.”

“I was on my way home when …”

“From where?” Willis snapped.

“Huh?”

“Where were you coming from?”

“From my girl’s house.”

“Where?”

“Around the corner. Right across the street from my house.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Well, you know,” Parry said.

“No, we don’t know,” Willis said.

“For God’s sake, Hal,” Meyer said, “leave the man a little something personal and private, will you please?”

“Thanks,” Parry said.

“You went to see your girl friend,” Meyer said. “What time was that, Alan?”

“I went up there around nine-thirty. Her mother goes to work at nine. So I went up around nine-thirty.”

“You unemployed?” Willis snapped.

“Yes, sir,” Parry said.

“When’s the last time you worked?”

“Well, you see …”

“Answer the question!”

“Give him a chance, Hal!”

“He’s stalling!”

“He’s trying to answer you!” Gently, Meyer said, “What happened, Alan?”

“I had this job, and I dropped the eggs.”

“What?”

“At the grocery store on Eightieth. I was working in the back and one day we got all these crates of eggs, and I was taking them to the refrigerator, and I dropped two crates. So I got fired.”

“How long did you work there?”

“From when I got out of high school.”

“When was that?” Willis asked.

“Last June.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yes, sir, I have a diploma,” Parry said.

“So what have you been doing since you lost the job at the grocery?”

Parry shrugged. “Nothing,” he said.

“How old are you?” Willis asked.

“I’ll be nineteen … what’s today?”

“Today’s the ninth.”

“I’ll be nineteen next week. The fifteenth of March.”

“You’re liable to be spending your birthday in jail,” Willis said.

“Now cut it out,” Meyer said, “I won’t have you threatening this man. What happened when you left your girl friend’s house, Alan?”

“I met this guy.”

“Where?”

“Outside the Corona.”

“The what?”

“The Corona. You know the movie house that’s all boarded up about three blocks from here, you know the one?”

“We know it,” Willis said.

“Well, there.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Just standing. Like as if he was waiting for somebody.”

“So what happened?”

“He stopped me and said was I busy? So I said it depended. So he said would I like to make five bucks? So I asked him doing what? He said there was a lunch pail in the park, and if I picked it up for him, he’d give me five bucks. So I asked him why he couldn’t go for it himself, and he said he was waiting there for somebody, and he was afraid if he left the guy might show up and think he’d gone. So he said I should get the lunch pail for him and bring it back to him there outside the theater so he wouldn’t miss his friend. He was supposed to meet him outside the Corona, you see. You know the place? A cop got shot outside there once.”

“I told you we know it,” Willis said.

“So I asked him what was in the lunch pail, and he said just his lunch, so I said he could buy some lunch for five bucks, but he said he also had a few other things in there with his sandwiches, so I asked him like what and he said do you want this five bucks or not? So I took the five and went to get the pail for him.”

“He gave you the five dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“Before you went for the pail?”

“Yeah.”

“Go on.”

“He’s lying,” Willis said.

“This is the truth, I swear to God.”

“What’d you think was in that pail?”

Parry shrugged. “Lunch. And some other little things. Like he said.”

“Come on,” Willis said, “do you expect us to buy that?”

“Kid, what’d you really think was in that pail?” Meyer asked gently.

“Well … look … you can’t do nothing to me for what I thought was in there, right?”

“That’s right,” Meyer said. “If you could lock up a man for what he’s thinking, we’d all be in jail, right?”

“Right,” Parry said, and laughed.

Meyer laughed with him. The Greek chorus laughed too. Everybody laughed except Willis, who kept staring stone-faced at Parry. “So what’d you think was in the pail?” Meyer said.

“Junk,” Parry said.

“You a junkie?” Willis asked.

“No, sir, never touch the stuff.”

“Roll up your sleeve.”

“I’m not a junkie, sir.”

“Let’s see your arm.”

Parry rolled up his sleeve.

“I told you,” parry said.

“Okay, you told us. What’d you plan to do with that lunch pail?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Corona is three blocks east of here. You picked up that pail and started heading west. What were you planning?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why were you heading away from where the deaf man was waiting?”

“I wasn’t heading anyplace.”

“You were heading west.”

“No, I musta got mixed up.”

“You got so mixed up you forgot how you came into the park, right? You forgot that the entrance was behind you, right?”

“No, I didn’t forget where the entrance was.”

“Then why’d you head deeper into the park?”

“I told you. I musta got mixed up.”

“He’s a lying little bastard,” Willis said. “I’m going to book him, Meyer, no matter what you say.”

“Now hold it, just hold it a minute,” Meyer said. “You know you’re in pretty serious trouble if there’s junk in that pail, don’t you, Alan?” Meyer said.

“Why? Even if there is junk in there, it ain’t mine.”

“Well, I know that, Alan, I believe you, but the law is pretty specific about possession of narcotics. I’m sure you must realize that every pusher we pick up claims somebody must have planted the stuff on him, he doesn’t know how it got there, it isn’t his, and so on. They all give the same excuses, even when we’ve got them dead to rights.”

“Yeah, I guess they must,” Parry said.

“So you see, I won’t be able to help you much if there really is junk in that pail.”

“Yeah, I see,” Parry said.

“He knows there’s no junk in that pail. His partner sent him to pick up the money,” Willis said.

“No, no,” Parry said, shaking his head.

“You didn’t know anything about the thirty thousand dollars, is that right?” Meyer asked gently.

“Nothing,” Parry said, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, I met this guy outside the Corona and he gave me five bucks to go get his pail.”

“Which you decided to steal,” Willis said.

“Huh?”

“Were you going to bring that pail back to him?”

“Well …” Parry hesitated. He glanced at Meyer. Meyer nodded encouragingly. “Well, no,” Parry said. “I figured if there was junk in it, maybe I could turn a quick buck, you know. There’s lots of guys in this neighborhood’ll pay for stuff like that.”

“Stuff like what?” Willis asked.

“Like what’s in the pail,” Parry said.

“Open the pail, kid,” Willis said.

“No.” Parry shook his head. “No, I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“If it’s junk, I don’t know nothing about it. And if it’s thirty G’s, I got nothing to do with it. I don’t know nothing. I don’t want to answer no more questions, that’s it.”

“That’s it, Hal,” Meyer said.

“Go on home, kid,” Willis said.

“I can go?”

“Yeah, yeah, you can go,” Willis said wearily.

Parry stood up quickly, and without looking back headed straight for the gate in the slatted railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. He was down the hallway in a wink. His footfalls clattered noisily on the iron-runged steps leading to the street floor below.

“What do you think?” Willis said.

“I think we did it ass-backwards,” Hawes said. “I think we should have followed him out of the park instead of nailing him. He would have led us straight to the deaf man.”

“The lieutenant didn’t think so. The lieutenant figured nobody would be crazy enough to send a stranger after fifty thousand dollars. The lieutenant figured the guy who made the pickup had to be a member of the gang.”

“Yeah, well the lieutenant was wrong,” Hawes said.

“You know what I think?” Kling said.

“What?”

“I think the deaf man knew there’d be nothing in that lunch pail. That’s why he could risk sending a stranger for it. He knew the money wouldn’t be there, and he knew we’d pick up whoever he sent.”

“If that’s the case …” Willis started.

“He wants to kill Scanlon,” Kling said.

The detectives all looked at each other. Faulk scratched his head and said, “Well, I better be getting back across the park, unless you need me some more.”

“No, thanks a lot, Stan,” Meyer said.

“Don’t mention it,” Faulk said, and went out.

“I enjoyed the plant,” Eileen Burke said, and glanced archly at Willis, and then swiveled toward the gate and out of the squadroom.

“Can it be the breeze …” Meyer sang.

“That fills the trees …” Kling joined in.

“Go to hell,” Willis said, and then genuflected and piously added, “Sisters.”

If nobody in the entire world likes working on Saturday, even less people like working on Saturday night.

Saturday night, baby, is the night to howl. Saturday night is the night to get out there and hang ten. Saturday night is when you slip into your stain slippers and your Pucci dress, put on your shirt with the monogram on the cuff, spray your navel with cologne, and laugh too loud.

The bitch city is something different on Saturday night, sophisticated in black, scented and powdered, but somehow not as unassailable, shiveringly beautiful in a dazzle of blinking lights. Reds and oranges, electric blues and vibrant greens assault the eye incessantly, and the resultant turn-on is as sweet as a quick sharp fix in a penthouse pad, a liquid cool that conjures dreams of towering glass spires and enameled minarets. There is excitement in this city on Saturday night, but it is tempered by romantic expectancy. She is not a bitch, this city. Not on Saturday night.

Not if you will love her.

Nobody likes to work on Saturday night, and so the detectives of the 87th Squad should have been pleased when the police commissioner called Byrnes to say that he was asking the D.A.’s Squad to assume the responsibility of protecting Deputy Mayor Scanlon from harm. If they’d had any sense at all, the detectives of the 87th would have considered themselves fortunate.

But the commissioner’s cut was deeply felt, first by Byrnes, and then by every man on the squad when he related the news to them. They went their separate ways that Saturday night, some into the streets to work, others home to rest, but each of them felt a corporate sense of failure. Not one of them realized how fortunate he was.

The two detectives from the D.A.’s Squad were experienced men who had handled special assignments before. When the deputy mayor’s personal chauffeur arrived to pick them up that night, they were waiting on the sidewalk outside the Criminal Courts Building, just around the corner from the District Attorney’s office. It was exactly 8:00 P.M. The deputy mayor’s chauffeur had picked up the Cadillac sedan at the municipal garage a half-hour earlier. He had gone over the upholstery with a whisk broom, passed a dust rag over the hood, wiped the windows with a chamois cloth, and emptied all the ashtrays. He was now ready for action, and he was pleased to note that the detectives were right on time; he could not abide tardy individuals.

They drove up to Smoke Rise, which was where the deputy mayor lived, and one of the detectives got out of the car and walked to the front door, and rang the bell, and was ushered into the huge brick house by a maid in a black uniform. The deputy mayor came down the long white staircase leading to the center hall, shook hands with the detective from the D.A.’s Squad, apologized for taking up his time this way on a Saturday night, made some comment about the “damn foolishness of it all,” and then called up to his wife to tell her the car was waiting. His wife came down the steps, and the deputy mayor introduced her to the detective from the D.A.’s Squad, and then they all went to the front door.

The detective stepped outside first, scanned the bushes lining the driveway, and then led the deputy mayor and his wife to the car. He opened the door and allowed them to precede him into the automobile. The other detective was stationed on the opposite side of the car, and as soon as the deputy mayor and his wife were seated, both detectives got into the automobile and took positions facing them on the jump seats.

The dashboard clock read 8:30 P.M.

The deputy mayor’s personal chauffeur set the car in motion, and the deputy mayor made a few jokes with the detectives as they drove along the gently winding roads of exclusive Smoke Rise on the edge of the city’s northern river, and then onto the service road leading to the River Highway. It had been announced in the newspapers the week before that the deputy mayor would speak at a meeting of the B’nai Brith in the city’s largest synagogue at nine o’clock that night. The deputy mayor’s home in Smoke Rise was only fifteen minutes away from the synagogue, and so the chauffeur drove slowly and carefully while the two detectives from the D.A.’s Squad eyed the automobiles that moved past on either side of the Cadillac.

The Cadillac exploded when the dashboard clock read 8:45 P.M.

The bomb was a powerful one.

It erupted from somewhere under the hood, sending flying steel into the car, tearing off the roof like paper, blowing the doors into the highway. The car screeched out of control, lurched across two lanes, rolled onto its side like a ruptured metal beast and was suddenly ablaze.

A passing convertible tried to swerve around the flaming Cadillac.

There was a second explosion. The convertible veered wildly and crashed into the river barrier.

When the police arrived on the scene, the only person alive in either car was a bleeding seventeen-year-old girl who had gone through the windshield of the convertible.