Fuzz

Chapter 4

Detective Bert Kling was in love, but nobody else was.

The mayor was not in love, he was furious. The mayor called the police commissioner in high dudgeon and wanted to know what kind of a goddam city this was where a man of the caliber of Parks Commissioner Cowper could be gunned down on the steps of Philharmonic Hall, what the hell kind of a city was this, anyway?

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Perhaps you can tell me why adequate police protection was not provided for Commissioner Cowper when his wife informs me this morning that the police knew a threat had been made on his life, perhaps you can tell me that,” the mayor shouted into the phone.

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Or perhaps you can tell me why you still haven’t located the apartment from which those shots were fired, when the autopsy has already revealed the angle of entrance and your ballistics people have come up with a probable trajectory, perhaps you can tell me that.”

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Get me some results, do you want this city to become a laughingstock?”

The police commissioner certainly didn’t want the city to become a laughingstock, so he said, “Yes, sir, I’ll do the best I can,” and the mayor said, “You had better,” and hung up.

There was no love lost between the mayor and the police commissioner that morning. So the police commissioner asked his secretary, a tall wan blond man who appeared consumptive and who claimed his constant hacking cough was caused by smoking three packs of cigarettes a day in a job that was enough to drive anyone utterly mad, the police commissioner asked his secretary to find out what the mayor had meant by a threat on the parks commissioner’s life, and report back to him immediately. The tall wan blond secretary got to work at once, asking around here and there, and discovering that the 87th Precinct had indeed logged several telephone calls from a mysterious stranger who had threatened to kill the parks commissioner unless five thousand dollars was delivered to him by noon yesterday. When the police commissioner received this information, he said, “Oh, yeah?” and immediately dialed Frederick 7-8024, and asked to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes.

Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes had enough headaches that morning, what with Carella in the hospital with second-degree burns on the backs of both hands, and the painters having moved from the squadroom into his own private office, where they were slopping up everything in sight and telling jokes on their ladders. Byrnes was not overly fond of the police commissioner to begin with, the commissioner being a fellow who had been imported from a neighboring city when the new administration took over, a city which, in Byrnes’ opinion, had an even larger crime rate than this one. Nor was the new commissioner terribly fond of Lieutenant Byrnes, because Byrnes was the sort of garrulous Irishman who shot off his mouth at Police Benevolent Association and Emerald Society functions, letting anyone within earshot know what he thought of the mayor’s recent whiz-kid appointee. So there was hardly any sweetness and light oozing over the telephone wires that morning between the commissioner’s office at Headquarters downtown on High Street, and Byrnes’ paint-spattered corner office on the second floor of the grimy station house on Grover Avenue.

“What’s this all about, Byrnes?” the commissioner asked.

“Well, sir,” Byrnes said, remembering that the former commissioner used to call him Pete, “we received several threatening telephone calls from an unidentified man yesterday, which telephone calls I discussed personally with Parks Commissioner Cowper.”

What did you do about those calls, Byrnes?”

“We placed the drop site under surveillance, and apprehended the man who made the pickup.”

“So what happened?”

“We questioned him and released him.”

“Why?”

“Insufficient evidence. He was also interrogated after the parks commissioner’s murder last night. We did not have ample grounds for an arrest. The man is still free, but a telephone tap went into effect this morning, and we’re ready to move in if we monitor anything incriminating.”

“Why wasn’t the commissioner given police protection?”

“I offered it, sir, and it was refused.”

“Why wasn’t your suspect put under surveillance before a crime was committed?”

“I couldn’t spare any men, sir, and when I contacted the 115th in Riverhead, where the suspect resides, I was told they could not spare any men either. Besides, as I told you, the commissioner did not want protection. He felt we were dealing with a crackpot, sir, and I must tell you that was our opinion here, too. Until, of course, recent events proved otherwise.”

“Why hasn’t that apartment been found yet?”

“What apartment, sir?”

“The apartment from which the two shots were fired that killed Parks Commissioner Cowper.”

“Sir, the crime was not committed in our precinct. Philharmonic Hall, sir, is in the 53rd Precinct and, as I’m sure the commissioner realizes, a homicide is investigated by the detectives assigned to the squad in the precinct in which the homicide was committed.”

“Don’t give me any of that bullshit, Byrnes,” the police commissioner said.

“That is the way we do it in this city, sir,” Byrnes said.

“This is your case,” the commissioner answered. “You got that, Byrnes?”

“If you say so, sir.”

“I say so. Get some men over to the area, and find that goddamn apartment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And report back to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Byrnes said, and hung up.

“Getting a little static, huh?” the first painter said.

“Getting your ass chewed out, huh?” the second painter said.

Both men were on their ladders, grinning and dripping apple green paint on the floor.

“Get the hell out of this office!” Byrnes shouted.

“We ain’t finished yet,” the first painter said.

“We don’t leave till we finish,” the second painter said.

“That’s our orders,” the first painter said.

“We don’t work for the Police Department, you know.”

“We work for the Department of Public Works.”

“Maintenance and Repair.”

“And we don’t quit a job till we finish it.”

“Stop dripping paint all over my goddamn floor!” Byrnes shouted, and stormed out of the office. “Hawes!” he shouted. “Kling! Willis! Brown! Where the hell is everybody?” he shouted.

Meyer came out of the men’s room, zipping up his fly. “What’s up, Skipper?” he said.

“Where were you?”

“Taking a leak. Why, what’s up?”

“Get somebody over to the area!” Byrnes shouted.

“What area?”

“Where the goddamn commissioner got shot!”

“Okay, sure,” Meyer said, “But why? That’s not our case.”

“It is now.”

“Oh?”

“Who’s catching?”

“I am.”

“Where’s Kling?”

“Day off.”

“Where’s Brown?”

“On that wire tap.”

“And Willis?”

“He went to the hospital to see Steve.”

“And Hawes?”

“He went down for some Danish.”

“What the hell am I running here, a resort in the mountains?”

“No, sir. We …”

“Send Hawes over there! Send him over the minute he gets back. Get on the phone to Ballistics. Find out what they’ve got. Call the M.E.’s office and get that autopsy report. Get cracking, Meyer!”

“Yes, sir!” Meyer snapped, and went immediately to the telephone.

“This goddamn racket drives me crazy,” Byrnes said, and started to storm back into his office, remembered that the jolly green painters were in there slopping around, and stormed into the Clerical Office instead.

“Get those files in order!” he shouted. “What the hell do you do in here all day, Miscolo, make coffee?”

“Sir?” Miscolo said, because that’s exactly what he was doing at the moment.

Bert Kling was in love.

It was not a good time of the year to be in love. It is better to be in love when flowers are blooming and balmy breezes are wafting in off the river, and strange animals come up to lick your hand. There’s only one good thing about being in love in March, and that’s that it’s better to be in love in March than not to be in love at all, as the wise man once remarked.

Bert Kling was madly in love.

He was madly in love with a girl who was twenty-three years old, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blond hair long and trailing midway down her back or sometimes curled into a honey conch shell at the back of her head, her eyes a cornflower blue, a tall girl who came just level with his chin when she was wearing heels. He was madly in love with a scholarly girl who was studying at night for her master’s degree in psychology while working during the day conducting interviews for a firm downtown on Shepherd Street; a serious girl who hoped to go on for her Ph.D., and then pass the state boards, and then practice psychology; a nutty girl who was capable of sending to the squadroom a six-foot high heart cut out of plywood and painted red and lettered in yellow with the words Cynthia Forrest Loves Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram Kling, So Is That A Crime?, as she had done on St. Valentine’s Day just last month (and which Kling had still not heard the end of from all his comical colleagues); an emotional girl who could burst into tears at the sight of a blind man playing an accordian on The Stem, to whom she gave a five-dollar bill, merely put the bill silently into the cup, soundlessly, it did not even make a rustle, and turned away to weep into Kling’s shoulder; a passionate girl who clung to him fiercely in the night and who woke him sometimes at six in the morning to say, “Hey, Cop, I have to go to work in a few hours, are you interested?” to which Kling invariably answered, “No, I am not interested in sex and things like that,” and then kissed her until she was dizzy and afterwards sat across from her at the kitchen table in her apartment, staring at her, marveling at her beauty and once caused her to blush when he said, “There’s a woman who sells pidaguas on Mason Avenue, her name is Iluminada, she was born in Puerta Rico. Your name should be Illuminada, Cindy. You fill the room with light.”

Boy, was he in love.

But, it being March, and the streets still banked high with February snow, and the winds howling, and the wolves growling and chasing

civilians in troikas who cracked whips and huddled in bear rugs, it being a bitter cold winter which seemed to have started in September and showed no signs of abating till next August, when possibly, but just possibly, all the snow might melt and the flowers would bloom — it being that kind of a treacherous winter, what better to do than discuss police work? What better to do than rush along the frozen street on Cindy’s lunch hour with her hand clutched tightly in the crook of his arm and the wind whipping around them and drowning out Kling’s voice as he tried to tell her of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Parks Commissioner Cowper.

“Yes, it sounds very mysterious,” Cindy said, and brought her hand out of her pocket in an attempt to keep the wind from tearing the kerchief from her head. “Listen, Bert,” she said, “I’m really very tired of winter, aren’t you tired of it?”

“Yeah,” Kling said. “Listen, Cindy, you know who I hope this isn’t?”

“Hope who isn’t?” she said.

“The guy who made the calls. The guy who killed the commissioner. You know who I hope we’re not up against?”

“Who?” she asked.

“The deaf man,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“He was a guy we went up against a few years back, it must have been maybe seven, eight years ago. He tore this whole damn city apart trying to rob a bank. He was the smartest crook we ever came up against.”

“Who?” Cindy said.

“The deaf man,” Kling said again.

“Yes, but what’s his name?”

“We don’t know his name. We never caught him. He jumped in the river and we thought he drowned, but maybe he’s back now. Like Frankenstein.”

“Like Frankenstein’s monster, you mean,” Cindy said.

“Yeah, like him. Remember he was supposed to have died in that fire, but he didn’t.”

“I remember.”

“That was a scary picture,” Kling said.

“I wet my pants when I saw it,” Cindy said. “And that was on television.”

“You wet your pants on television?” Kling said. “In front of forty million people?”

“No, I saw Frankenstein on television,” Cindy said, and grinned and poked him.

“The deaf man,” Kling said. “I hope it’s not him.”

It was the first time any man on the squad had voiced the possibility that the commissioner’s murderer was the man who had given them so much trouble so many years ago. The thought was somewhat numbing. Bert Kling was a young man, and not a particularly philosophical one, but he intuitively understood that the deaf man (who had once signed a note L. Sordo, very comical, El Sordo meaning “The Deaf One” in Spanish) was capable of manipulating odds with computer accuracy, of spreading confusion and fear, of juggling permutations and combinations in a manner calculated to upset the strict and somewhat bureaucratic efficiency of a police precinct, making law enforcers behave like bumbling Keystone cops in a yellowing ancient film, knew instinctively and with certainty that if the commissioner’s murderer was indeed the deaf man, they had not yet heard the end of all this. And because the very thought of what the deaf man might and could do was too staggering to contemplate, Kling involuntarily shuddered, and he knew it was not from the cold.

“I hope it isn’t him,” he said, and his words were carried away on the wind.

“Kiss me,” Cindy said suddenly, “and then buy me a hot chocolate, you cheapskate.”

The boy who came into the muster room that Wednesday afternoon was about twelve years old.

He was wearing his older brother’s hand-me-down ski parka which was blue and three sizes too large for him. He had pulled the hood of the parka up over his head, and had tightened the drawstrings around his neck, but the hood was still too big, and it kept falling off. He kept trying to pull it back over his head as he came into the station house carrying an envelope in the same hand with which he wiped his runny nose. He was wearing high-topped sneakers with the authority of all slum kids who wear sneakers winter and summer, all year round, despite the warnings of podiatrists. He walked to the muster desk with a sneaker-inspired bounce, tried to adjust the parka hood again, wiped his dripping nose again, and then looked up at Sergeant Murchison and said, “You the desk sergeant?”

“I’m the desk sergeant,” Murchison answered without looking up from the absentee slips he was filling out from that morning’s muster

sheet. It was 2:10 P.M., and in an hour and thirty-five minutes the afternoon shift of uniformed cops would be coming in, and there’d be a new roll call to take, and new absentee slips to fill out, a regular rat race, he should have become a fireman or a postman.

“I’m supposed to give you this,” the kid said, and reached up to hand Murchison the sealed envelope.

“Thanks,” Murchison said, and accepted the envelope without looking at the kid, and then suddenly raised his head and said, “Hold it just a second.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Just hold it right there a second,” Murchison said, and opened the envelope. He unfoled the single sheet of white paper that had been neatly folded in three equal parts, and he read what was on the sheet, and then he looked down at the kid again and said, “Where’d you get this?”

“Outside.”

“Where?”

“A guy gave it to me.”

“What guy?”

“A tall guy outside.”

“Outside where?”

“Near the park there. Across the street.”

“Gave you this?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said I should bring it in here and give it to the desk sergeant.”

“You know the guy?”

“No, he gave me five bucks to bring it over here.”

“What’d he look like?”

“A tall guy with blond hair. He had a thing in his ear.”

“What kind of a thing?”

“Like he was deaf,” the kid said, and wiped his hand across his nose again.

That was what the note read.

So they studied the note, being careful not to get any more fingerprints on it than Sergeant Murchison had already put there, and then they stood around a runny-nosed twelve-year-old-kid wearing a blue ski parka three sizes too large for him, and fired questions at him as though they had captured Jack the Ripper over from London for the weekend.

They got nothing from the kid except perhaps his cold.

He repeated essentially what he had told Sergeant Murchison, that a tall blond guy wearing a thing in his ear (A hearing aid, you mean, kid?) yeah, a thing in his ear, had stopped him across the street from the police station and offered him five bucks to carry an envelope in to the desk sergeant. The kid couldn’t see nothing wrong with bringing an envelope into the police station, so he done it, and that was all, he didn’t even know who the guy with the thing in his ear was. (You mean a hearing aid kid?) Yeah, a thing in his ear, he didn’t know who he was, never even seen him around the neighborhood or nothing, so could he go home now because he had to make a stop at Linda’s Boutique to pick up some dresses for his sister who did sewing at home for Mrs. Montana? (He was wearing a hearing aid, huh, kid?) Yeah, a thing in his ear, the kid said.

So they let the kid go at two-thirty without even offering him an ice cream cone or some gumdrops, and then they sat around the squadroom handling the suspect note with a pair of tweezers and decided to send it over to Lieutenant Sam Grossman at the police lab in the hope that he could lift some latent prints that did not belong to Sergeant Murchison.

None of them mentioned the deaf man.

Nobody likes to talk about ghosts.

Or even think about them.

“Hello, Bernice,” Meyer said into the telephone, “is your boss around? Yeah, sure, I’ll wait.”

Patiently, he tapped a pencil on his desk and waited. In a moment, a bright perky voice materialized on the line.

“Assistant District Attorney Raoul Chabrier,” the voice insisted.

“Hello, Rollie, this is Meyer Meyer up here at the 87th,” Meyer said. “How’s every little thing down there on Chelsea Street?”

“Oh, pretty good, pretty good,” Chabrier said, “What have you got for us, a little homicide up there perhaps?”

“No, nothing like that, Rollie,” Meyer said.

“A little ax murder perhaps?” Chabrier said.

“No, as a matter of fact, this is something personal,” Meyer said.

“Oh-ho!” Chabrier said.

“Yeah. Listen, Rollie, what can you do if somebody uses your name?”

“What do you mean?” Chabrier asked.

“In a book.”

“Oh-ho!“ Chabrier said. “Did somebody use your name in a book?”

“Yes.”

“In a book about the workings of the police department?”

“No.”

“Were you mentioned specifically?”

“No. Well, yes and no. What do you mean?”

“Did the book specifically mention Detective 3rd/Grade Meyer …”

“Detective 2nd/Grade,” Meyer corrected.

“It specifically mentioned Detective 2nd/Grade Meyer Meyer of the …”

“No.”

“It didn’t mention you?”

“No. Not that way.”

“I thought you said somebody used your name.”

“Well, they did. She did.”

“Meyer, I’m a busy man,” Chabrier said. “I’ve got a case load here

that would fell a brewer’s horse, now would you please tell me what’s on your mind?”

“A novel,” Meyer said. “It’s a novel named Meyer Meyer.”

“That is the title of the novel?” Chabrier asked.

“Yes. Can I sue?”

“I’m a criminal lawyer,” Chabrier said.

“Yes, but …”

“I am not familiar with the law of literary property.’

“Yes, but …”

“Is it a good book?”

“I don’t know,” Meyer said. “You see,” he said, “I’m a person, and this book is about some college professor or something, and he’s a short plump fellow …”

“I’ll have to read it,” Chabrier said.

“Will you call me after you’ve read it?”

“What for?”

“To advise me.”

“On what?”

“On whether I can sue or not.”

“I’ll have to read the law,” Chabrier said. “Do I owe you a favor, Meyer?”

“You owe me six of them,” Meyer said somewhat heatedly, “as for example the several times I could have got you out of bed at three o’clock in the morning when we had real meat here in the squadroom and at great risk to myself I held the suspect until the following morning so you could get your beauty sleep on nights when you had the duty. Now, Rollie, I’m asking a very tiny favor, I don’t want to go to the expense of getting some fancy copyright lawyer or whatever the hell, I just want to know whether I can sue somebody who used my name that’s on a record in the Department of Health on a birth certificate, can I sue this person who uses my name as the title of a novel, and for a character in a novel, when here I am a real person, for Christ’s sake!”

“Okay, don’t get excited,” Chabrier said.

“Who’s excited?” Meyer said.

“I’ll read the law and call you back.”

“When?”

“Sometime.”

“Maybe if we got somebody in the squadroom sometime when you’ve got the duty, I’ll fly in the face of Miranda-Escobedo again and hold off till morning so you can peacefully snore the night …”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” Chabrier paused. “Don’t you want to know what time tomorrow?”

“What time tomorrow?” Meyer asked.

The landlady had arthritis, and she hated winter, and she didn’t like cops too well, either. She immediately told Cotton Hawes that there had been other policemen prowling around ever since that big mucky-muck got shot last night, why couldn’t they leave a lady alone? Hawes, who had been treated to similar diatribes from every landlady and superintendent along the street, patiently explained that he was only doing his job, and said he knew she would want to co-operate in bringing a murderer to justice. The landlady said the city was rotten and corrupt, and as far as she was concerned they could shoot all those damn big mucky-mucks, and she wouldn’t lose no sleep over any of them.

Hawes had thus far visited four buildings in a row of identical slum tenements facing the glittering glass and concrete structure that was the city’s new Philharmonic Hall. The building, a triumph of design (the acoustics weren’t so hot, but what the hell) could be clearly seen from any one of the tenements, the wide marble steps across the avenue offering an unrestricted view of anyone who happened to be standing on them, or coming down them, or going up them. The man who had plunked two rifle slugs into Cowper’s head could have done so from any of these buildings. The only reason the police department was interested in the exact source of the shots was that the killer may have left some evidence behind him. Evidence is always nice to have in a murder case.

The first thing Hawes asked the landlady was whether she had rented an apartment or a room recently to a tall blond man wearing a hearing aid.

“Yes,” the landlady said.

That was a good start. Hawes was an experienced detective, and he recognized immediately that the landlady’s affirmative reply was a terribly good start.

“Who?” he asked immediately. “Would you know his name?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Orecchio. Mort Orecchio.”

Hawes took out his pad and began writing. “Orecchio,” he said, “Mort. Would you happen to know whether it was Morton or Mortimer or exactly what?”

“Just Mort,” the landlady said. “Mort Orecchio. He was Eye-talian.”

“How do you know?”

“Anything ending in O is Eye-talian.”

“You think so? How about Shapiro?” Hawes suggested.

“What are you, a wise guy?” the landlady said.

“This fellow Orecchio, which apartment did you rent him?”

“A room, not an apartment,” the landlady said. “Third floor front.”

“Facing Philharmonic?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I see the room?”

“Sure why not? I got nothing else to do but show cops rooms.”

They began climbing. The hallway was cold and the air shaft windows were rimed with frost. There was the commingled smell of garbage and urine on the stairs, a nice clean old lady this landlady. She kept complaining about her arthritis all the way up to the third floor, telling Hawes the cortisone didn’t help her none, all them big mucky-muck doctors making promises that didn’t help her pain at all. She stopped outside a door with the brass numerals 31 on it, and fished into the pocket of her apron for a key. Down the hall, a door opened a crack and then closed again.

“Who’s that?” Hawes asked.

“Who’s who?” the landlady said.

“Down the hall there. The door that just opened and closed.”

“Musta been Polly,” the landlady said, and unlocked the door to 31.

The room was small and cheerless. A three-quarter bed was against the wall opposite the door, covered with a white chenille bedspread. A framed print was over the bed. It showed a logging mill and a river and a sheepdog looking up at something in the sky. A standing floor lamp was on the right of the bed. The shade was yellow and soiled. A stain, either whiskey or vomit, was on the corner of the bedspread where it was pulled up over the pillows. Opposite the bed, there was a single dresser with a mirror over it. The dresser had cigarette burns all the way around its top. The mirror was spotted and peeling. The sink alongside the dresser had a big rust ring near the drain.

“How long was he living here?” Hawes asked.

“Took the room there days ago.”

“Did he pay be check or cash?”

“Cash. In advance. Paid for a full week. I only rent by the week, I don’t like none of these one-night stands.”

“Naturally not,” Hawes said.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it ain’t such a fancy place, I shouldn’t be so fussy. Well, it may not be fancy,” the landlady said, “but it’s clean.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“I mean it ain’t got no bugs, mister.”

Hawes nodded and went to the window. The shade was torn and missing its pull cord. He grabbed the lower edge in his gloved hand, raised the shade and looked across the street.

“You hear any shots last night?”

“No.”

He looked down at the floor. There were no spent cartridge cases anywhere in sight.

“Who else lives on this floor?”

“Polly down the hall, that’s all.”

“Polly who?”

“Malloy.”

“Mind if I look through the dresser and the closet?”

“Go right ahead. I got all the time in the world. The way I spend my day is I conduct guided tours through the building.”

Hawes went to the dresser and opened each of the drawers. They were all empty, except for a cockroach nestling in the corner of the bottom drawer.

“You missed one,” Hawes said, and closed the drawer.

“Huh?” the landlady said.

Hawes went to the closet and opened it. There were seven wire hangers on the clothes bar. The closet was empty. He was about to close the door when something on the floor caught his eye. He stooped for a closer look, took a pen light from his pocket, and turned it on. The object on the floor was a dime.

“If that’s money,” the landlady said, “it belongs to me.”

“Here,” Hawes said, and handed her the dime. He did so knowing full well that even if the coin had belonged to the occupant of the room, it was as impossible to get latent prints from money as it was to get reimbursed by the city for gasoline used in one’s private car on police business.

“Is there a john in here?” he asked.

“Down the hall. Lock the door behind you.”

“I only wanted to know if there was another room, that’s all.”

“It’s clean, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

“I’m sure it’s spotless,” Hawes said. He took another look around. “So this is it, huh?”

“This is it.”

“I’ll be sending a man over to dust that sill,” Hawes said.

“Why?” the landlady said. “It’s clean.”

“I mean for fingerprins.”

“Oh.” The landlady started at him. “You think that big mucky-muck was shot from this room?”

“It’s possible,” Hawes said.

“Will that mean trouble for me?”

“Not unless you shot him,” Hawes said, and smiled.

“You got some sense of humor,” the landlady said.

They went out of the apartment. The landlady locked the door behind her. “Will that be all,” she asked, “or did you want to see anything else?”

“I want to talk to the woman down the hall,” Hawes said, “but I won’t need you for that. Thank you very much, you were very helpful.”

“It breaks the monotony,” the landlady said, and he believed her.

“Thank you again,” he said, and watched her as she went down the steps. He walked to the door marked 32 and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and said, “Miss Malloy?”

The door opened a crack.

“Who is it?” a voice said.

“Police officer. May I talk to you?”

“What about?”

“About Mr. Orecchio.”

“I don’t know any Mr. Orecchio,” the voice said.

“Miss Malloy …”

“It’s Mrs. Malloy, and I don’t know any Mr. Orecchio.”

“Could you open the door, ma’am?”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“I won’t …”

“I know a man got shot last night, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Did you hear the shots, Miss Malloy?”

“Mrs. Malloy.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Would you happen to know if Mr. Orecchio was in last night?”

“I don’t know who Mr. Orecchio is.”

“The man in 31.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Ma’am, could you please open the door?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ma’am, I can come back with a warrant, but it’d be a lot easier …”

“Don’t get me in trouble,” she said. “I’ll open the door, but please don’t get me in trouble.”

Polly Malloy was wearing a pale green cotton wrapper. The wrapper had short sleeves. Hawes saw the hit marks on her arms the moment she opened the door, and the hit marks explained a great deal about the woman who was Polly Malloy. She was perhaps twenty-six years old, with a slender youthful body and a face that would have been pretty if it were not so clearly stamped with knowledge. The green eyes were intelligent and alert, the mouth vulnerable. She worried her lip and held the wrapper closed about her naked body, and her fingers were long and slender, and the hit marks on her arms shouted all there was to shout.

“I’m not holding,” she said.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You can look around if you like.”

“I’m not interested,” Hawes said.

“Come in,” she said.

He went into the apartment. She closed and locked the door behind him.

“I don’t want trouble,” she said. “I’ve had enough trouble.”

“I won’t give you any. I only want to know about the man down the hall.”

“I know somebody got shot. Please don’t get me involved in it.”

They sat opposite each other, she on the bed, he on a straight-backed chair facing her. Something shimmered on the air between them, something as palpable as the tenement stink of garbage and piss surrounding them. They sat in easy informality, comfortably aware of each other’s trade, Cotton Hawes detective, Polly Malloy addict. And perhaps they knew each other better than a great many people ever get to know each other. Perhaps Hawes had been inside too many shooting galleries not to understand what it was like to be this girl, perhaps he had arrested too many hookers who were screwing for the couple of bucks they needed for a bag of shit, perhaps he had watched the agonized writhings of too many cold turkey kickers, perhaps his knowledge of this junkie or any junkie was as intimate as a pusher’s, perhaps he had seen too much and knew too much. And perhaps the girl had been collared too many times, had protested too many times that she was clean, had thrown too many decks of heroin under bar stools or down sewers at the approach of a cop, had been in too many different squadrooms and handled by too many different bulls, been offered the Lexington choice by too many different magistrates, perhaps her knowledge of the law as it applied to narcotics addicts was as intimate as any assistant district attorney’s, perhaps she too had seen too much and knew too much. Their mutual knowledge was electric, it generated a heat lightning of its own, ascertaining the curious symbiosis of lawbreaker and enforcer, affirming the interlocking subtlety of crime and punishment. There was a secret bond in that room, an affinity — almost an empathy. They could talk to each other without any bullshit. They were like spent lovers whispering on the same pillow.

“Did you know Orecchio?” Hawes asked.

“Will you keep me clean?”

“Unless you had something to do with it.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve got my word.”

“A cop?” she asked, and smiled wanly.

“You’ve got my word, if you want it.”

“I need it, it looks like.”

“You need it, honey.”

“I knew him.”

“How?”

“I met him the night he moved in.”

“When was that?”

“Two, three nights ago.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“I was hung up real bad, I needed a fix. I just got out of Caramoor, that sweet hole, a week ago. I haven’t had time to get really connected yet.”

“What were you in for?”

“Oh, hooking.”

“How old are you, Polly?”

“Nineteen. I look older, huh?”

“Yes, you look older.”

“I got married when I was sixteen. To another junkie like myself. Some prize.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Time at Castleview.”

“For what?”

Polly shrugged. “He started pushing.”

“Okay, what about Orecchio next door?”

“I asked him for a loan.”

“When was this?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Did he give it to you?”

“I didn’t actually ask him for a loan. I offered to turn a trick for him. He was right next door, you see, and I was pretty sick, I swear to God I don’t think I coulda made it to the street.”

“Did he accept?”

“He gave me ten bucks. He didn’t take nothing from me for it.”

“Sounds like a nice fellow.”

Polly shrugged.

“Not a nice fellow?” Hawes asked.

“Let’s say not my type,” Polly said.

“Mm-huh.”

“Let’s say a son of a bitch,” Polly said.

“What happened?”

“He came in here last night.”

“When? What time?”

“Musta been about nine, nine-thirty.”

“After the symphony started,” Hawes said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking out loud. Go on.”

“He said he had something nice for me. He said if I came into his room, he would give me something nice.”

“Did you go?”

“First I asked him what it was. He said it was something I wanted more than anything else in the world.”

“But did you go into his room?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“Like what?”

“Like a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“All right, what was this ‘something nice’ he promised you?”

“Hoss.”

“He had heroin for you?”

“And that’s why he asked you to come into his room? For the heroin?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what he said.”

“He didn’t attempt to sell it to you, did he?”

“No. But …”

“Yes?”

“He made me beg for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He showed it to me, and he let me taste it to prove that it was real stuff, and then he refused to give it to me unless I … begged for it.”

“I see.”

“He … teased me for … I guess for … for almost two hours. He kept looking at his watch and making me … do things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Stupid things. He asked me to sing for him. He made me sing ‘White Christmas,’ that was supposed to be a big joke, you see, because the shit is white and he knew how bad I needed a fix, so he made me sing ‘White Christmas’ over and over again, I musta sung it for him six or seven times. And all the while he kept looking at his watch.”

“Go ahead.”

“Then he … he asked me to strip, but … I mean, not just take off my clothes, but … you know, do a strip for him. And I did it. And he began … he began making fun of me, of the way I looked, of my body. I … he made me stand naked in front of him, and he just went on and on about how stupid and pathetic I looked, and he kept asking me if I really wanted the heroin, and then looked at his watch again, it was about eleven o’clock by then, I kept saying Yes, I want it, please let me have it, so he asked me to dance for him, he asked me to do the waltz, and then he asked me to do the shag, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, I never even heard of the shag, have you ever heard of the shag?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Hawes said.

“So I did all that for him, I would have done anything for him, and finally he told me to get on my knees and explain to him why I felt I really needed the bag of heroin. He said he expected me to talk for five minutes on the subject of the addict’s need for narcotics, and he looked at his watch and began timing me, and I talked. I was shaking by this time, I had the chills, I needed a shot more than …” Polly closed her eyes. “I began crying. I talked and I cried, and at last he looked at his watch and said, ‘Your five minutes are up. Here’s your poison, now get the hell out of here.’ And he threw the bag to me.”

“What time was this?”

“It musta been about ten minutes after eleven. I don’t have a watch, I hocked it long ago, but you can see the big electric numbers on top of the Mutual Building from my room, and when I was shooting up later it was 11:15, so this musta been about ten after or thereabouts.”

“And he kept looking at his watch all through this, huh?”

“Yes. As if he had a date or something.”

“He did,” Hawes said.

“Huh?”

“He had a date to shoot a man from his window. He was just amusing himself until the concert broke. A nice fellow, Mr. Orecchio.”

“I got to say one thing for him,” Polly said.

“What’s that?”

“It was good stuff.” A wistful look came onto her face and into her eyes. “It was some of the best stuff I’ve had in years. I wouldn’t have heard a cannon if it went off next door.”

Hawes made a routine check of all the city’s telephone directories, found no listing for an Orecchio — Mort, Morton, or Mortimer — and then called the Bureau of Criminal Identification at four o’clock that afternoon. The B.C.I., fully automated, called back within ten minutes to report that they had nothing on the suspect. Hawes then sent a teletype to the F.B.I. in Washington, asking them to check their voluminous files for any known criminal named Orecchio, Mort or Mortimer or Morton. He was sitting at his desk in the paint-smelling squadroom when Patrolman Richard Genero came up to ask whether he had to go to court with Kling on the collar they had made jointly and together the week before. Genero had been walking his beat all afternoon, and he was very cold, so he hung around long after Hawes had answered his question, hoping he would be offered a cup of coffee. His eye happened to fall on the name Hawes had scribbled onto his desk pad when calling the B.C.I., so Genero decided to make a quip.

“Another Italian suspect, I see,” he said.

“How do you know?” Hawes asked.

“Anything ending in O is Italian,” Genero said.

“How about Munro?” Hawes asked.

“What are you, a wise guy?” Genero said, and grinned.

He looked at the scribbled name again, and then said, “I got to admit this guy has a very funny name for an Italian.”

“Funny how?” Hawes asked.

“Ear,” Genero said.

“What?”

“Ear. That’s what Orecchio means in Italian. Ear.”

Which when coupled with Mort, of course, could mean nothing more or less than Dead Ear.

Hawes tore the page from the pad, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it at the wastebasket, missing.

“I said something?” Genero asked, knowing he’d never get his cup of coffee now.