Lady, Lady, I Did It!

Chapter 15

Three cops went to make the collar, but only one was needed.

Brown, Carella, and Kling talked to Batista, the owner of the garage. They talked in quiet whispers in the front office with the scarred swivel chair. Batista listened with his eyes wide, a cigar hanging from one corner of his mouth. Every now and then he nodded. His eyes got wider when he saw the three detectives draw their revolvers. He told them where Buddy Manners was, and they asked him to stay right there in the front office until this was all over, and he nodded and took the cigar out of his mouth and sat in the swivel chair with a shocked expression on his face because television and the movies had suddenly moved into his life and left him speechless.

Manners was working on a car at the back of the garage. He had a spray gun in his right hand, and he was wearing dark glasses, the paint fanning out from the gun, the side of the car turning black as he worked. The detectives approached with guns in their fists, and Manners looked up at them, seemed undecided for a moment, and then went right on working. He was going to play this one cool. He was going to pretend that three big bastards with drawn guns always marched into the garage while he was spraying cars. Brown was the first to speak; he had met Manners before.

“Hello there, Mr. Manners,” he said conversationally.

Manners cut off the spray gun, pushed the dark glasses up onto his forehead, and squinted at the three men. “Oh, hello,” he said. “Didn’t recognize you.” He still made no mention of the hardware, which was very much in evidence.

“Usually wear sunglasses when you’re working?” Brown asked conversationally.

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“How come?”

“Oh, you know. Sometimes this stuff gets all over the place. When I’ve got a small job, I don’t bother. But if it’s anything big I usually put on the glasses.” He grinned. “Be surprised how much wear and tear on the eyeballs it saves.”

“Mmm-huh,” Carella said pleasantly. “Ever wear sunglasses in the street?”

“Oh, sure,” Manners answered.

“Were you wearing them on Friday, October thirteenth?” Carella asked pleasantly.

“Gee, who knows? When was that?”

“The middle of last month,” Carella said pleasantly.

“Maybe, who knows? We had a lot of sunshine last month, didn’t we? I could’ve been wearing them.” He paused. “Why?”

“Why do you think we’re here, Mr. Manners?”

Manners shrugged. “I don’t know. Stolen car? That it?”

“No, guess again, Mr. Manners,” Brown said.

“Gee, I don’t know.”

“We think you’re a murderer, Mr. Manners,” Carella said.

“Huh?”

“We think you went into a bookstore on Culver Avenue on the evening of—”

And Kling suddenly reached for him. He stepped between Brown and Carella, cutting off Carella’s words, grabbing Manners by the front of his coveralls and then pushing him backward against the side of the car, slamming him there with all the strength of his arm and shoulder.

“Let’s have it,” Kling said.

“Let’s have what? Let go of my—”

Kling hit him. This was not a dainty slap across the cheek nor even a vicious backhanded swipe to the jaw. Kling hit him with the butt of his .38. The gun collided with Manners’ forehead, just over his right eye. It opened a cut two inches long that began bleeding immediately. Whatever Manners had expected, it wasn’t this. He went dead white. He shook his head to clear it and then stared at Kling, who hulked over him, right hand holding the gun, poised to strike again.

“Let’s have it,” Kling said.

“I... I don’t know what—”

Kling hit him again. He swung up his arm, and then he brought it forward and down in a sharp short blow, hitting the exact same spot, like a boxer working on an opened wound, hitting directly and with expert precision, and then pulling back the gun, and tightening his left hand in Manners’ clothes, and saying, “Talk.”

“You son of a... you son of a bitch,” Manners said, and Kling hit him again, breaking the bridge of his nose with the gun this time, the bones suddenly splintering through the skin.

“Talk,” he said.

Manners was bellowing in pain. He tried to bring his hands to his shattered nose, but Kling shoved them away. He stood before the man like a robot, the hand tight in the front of the coveralls, his eyes slitted and dead, the gun ready.

“Talk.”

“I... I...”

“Why’d you do it?” Kling asked.

“He... he... oh, Jesus, my nose... Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...” The pain was excruciating. He gasped with the agony of trying to bear it. His hands kept flitting up to his face, and Kling kept knocking them away. Tears filled his eyes mixed with the blood from the open wound on his forehead, running into the blood that gushed from his mashed nose. Kling brought back the gun a fourth time.

“No!” Manners screamed. “Don’t!” And then the words came streaming from his mouth in an anxious torrent, tumbling from his lips before the gun descended again, one word piling onto the next, a hysterical outburst from a terrified and wounded animal. “He came in here the lousy Jew bastard and told me the color was wrong the lousy kike told me the color was wrong I wanted to kill him right then and there I had to do the whole job over again the lousy son of a bitch bastard he had no right telling me the kike the louse I told him I warned him I told him he wasn’t going to get away with this can’t even speak English the bastard I followed him I killed him I killed him I killed him I killed him!”

The gun descended.

It hit Manners in the mouth and shattered his teeth, and he collapsed against the car as Kling raised the gun again and fell upon him.

It took both Carella and Brown a full five minutes to pull Kling off the other man. By that time, he was half dead. Carella was already typing up the false report in his head, the report that would explain how Manners had resisted arrest.

Patterns.

Patterns.

The pattern of December sunlight filtering past barred and grilled windows to settle in a dead white smear on a scarred wooden floor. Shadows merge with the sun smear, the shadows of tall men in shirt sleeves; it will be a cold December this year.

A telephone rings.

There is the sound of a city beyond those windows.

“87th Squad, Carella.”

There are patterns to this room. There is a timelessness to these men in this place doing the work they are doing.

They are all deeply involved in the classic ritual of blood.