The Mugger

11

It was Roger Havilland who brought in the first real suspect in the alleged mugger murder.

The suspect was a kid named Sixto Fangez, a Puerto Rican boy who had been in the city for a little more than two years. Sixto was twenty years old and had, until recently, been a member of a street gang known as “The Tornadoes.” He was no longer active, having retired in favor of marriage to a girl named Angelita. Angelita was pregnant.

Sixto had allegedly beat up a hooker and stolen $32 from her purse. The girl was one of the better-known prostitutes in the precinct territory and had, in fact, rolled in the hay on a good many occasions with members of the legion in blue. Some of these policemen had paid her for the privilege of her company.

In ordinary circumstances, in spite of the fact that the girl had made a positive identification of Sixto Fangez, Havilland might have been willing to forget the whole matter in consideration of a little legal tender. Assault charges had been known to slip the minds of many policemen when the right word, together with the right amount of currency, was exchanged.

It happened, however, that the newspapers were giving a big play to the funeral of Jeannie Paige — a funeral which had been delayed by the extensive autopsy examination performed on the body — on the morning that Sixto was brought upstairs to the squadroom. The newspapers were also pressuring the cops to do something about the rampant mugger, and so perhaps Havilland’s extreme enthusiasm could have been forgiven.

He booked a bewildered and frightened Sixto, barked “Follow me!” over his shoulder, and then led him to a room politely marked INTERROGATION. Inside the room, Havilland locked the door and calmly lighted a cigarette. Sixto watched him. Havilland was a big man who, in his own words, “took nonsense from nobody.” He had once started to break up a street fight and, in turn, had his arm broken in four places. The healing process, considering the fact that the bones would not set properly the first time and had to be rebroken and reset, was a painful thing to bear. The healing process had given Havilland a lot of time to think. He thought mostly about being a good cop. He thought also about survival. He formed a philosophy.

Sixto was totally unaware of the thinking process that had led to the formation of Havilland’s credo. He only knew that Havilland was the most hated and most feared cop in the barrio. He watched him with interest, a light film of sweat beading his thin upper lip. His eyes never left Havilland’s hands.

“Looks like you’re in a little trouble, huh, Sixto?” Havilland said.

Sixto nodded, his eyes blinking. He wet his lips.

“Now, why’d you go and beat up on Carmen, huh?” Havilland said. He leaned against the table in the room, leisurely blowing out a stream of smoke.

Sixto, thin, birdlike, wiped his bony hands on the coarse tweed of his trousers. Carmen was the prostitute he’d allegedly mugged. He knew that she had, on occasion, been friendly with the bulls. He did not know the extent of her relationship with Havilland. He maintained a calculating silence.

“Huh?” Havilland asked pleasantly, his voice unusually soft. “Now, why’d you go and beat up on a nice-looking little girl like Carmen?”

Sixto remained silent.

“Were you looking for some trim, huh, Sixto?”

“I am married,” Sixto said formally.

“Looking for a little gash, huh, Sixto?”

“No, I am married. I don’t go to the prostitutes,” Sixto said.

“What were you doing with Carmen, then?”

“She owe me money,” Sixto said. “I went to collec’ it.”

“You lent her money, is that right, Sixto?”

“Si,” Sixto said.

“How much money?”

“Abou’ forty dollars.”

“And so you went to her and tried to collect it, is that right?”

“Si. Iss my money. I lenn it to her maybe three, maybe four munns ago.”

“Why’d she need it, Sixto?”

“Hell, she’s a junkie. Don’t you know that?”

“I heard something along those lines,” Havilland said, smiling pleasantly. “So she needed a fix and she came to you for the loot, that right, Sixto?”

“She dinn come to me. I happen to be sittin’ in the bar, an’ she say she wass low, so I lay the forty on her. Thass all. So now I wenn aroun’ to collec’ it. So she gave me a hard time.”

“What kind of a hard time?”

“She say business iss bad, an’ she don’t get many johns comin’ from downtown, an’ like that. So I tell her I don’t care abou’ her business. All I wann is my forty dollars back. I’m a married man. I’m gonna have a baby soon. I cann fool aroun’ lennin money to hookers.”

“You working, Sixto?”

“Si. I work in a res’aurant downtown.”

“How come you needed this forty bucks so bad right now?”

“I tol’ you. My wife’s pregin. I got doctor bills, man.”

“So why’d you hit Carmen?”

“Because I tell her I don’t have to stann aroun’ bullin’ with a hooker. I tell her I wann my money. So she come back and say my Angelita iss a hooker, too! Man, thass my wife. Angelita! She’s clean like the Virgin Mary! So I bust her in the mouth. Thass what happen.”

“And then you went through her purse, huh, Sixto?”

“Only to get my forty dollars.”

“And you got thirty-two, right?”

“Si. She still owe me eight.”

Havilland nodded sympathetically and then slid an ashtray across the tabletop. With small, sharp stabs, he stubbed out his cigarette. He looked up at Sixto then, a smile on his cherubic face. He sucked in a deep breath, his massive shoulders heaving.

“Now, what’s the real story, Sixto?” he said softly.

“Thass the real story,” Sixto said. “Thass the way it happen.”

“What about these other girls you’ve been mugging?”

Sixto looked at Havilland unblinkingly. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech. Then he said, “What?”

“These other girls all over the city? How about it, Sixto?”

“What?” Sixto said again.

Havilland moved off the table gracefully. He took three steps to where Sixto was standing. Still smiling, he brought his fist back and rammed the knuckles into Sixto’s mouth.

The blow caught Sixto completely by surprise. His eyes opened wide, and he felt himself staggering backward. Then he collided with the wall and automatically wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. A red smear stained the tan of his fingers. He blinked his eyes and looked across at Havilland.

“What for you hit me?” he asked.

Tell me about the other girls, Sixto,” Havilland said, moving toward him again.

“What other girls? What are you crazy or something? I hit a hooker to get back my—”

Havilland lashed out backhanded, then swung his open palm around to catch Sixto’s other cheek. Again, the hand lashed back, forward, back, forward, until Sixto’s head was rocking like a tall blade of grass in a stiff breeze. He tried to cover his face, and Havilland jabbed out at his stomach. Sixto doubled over in pain.

“Ave Maria,” he said, “why are you—”

“Shut up!” Havilland shouted. Tell me about the muggings, you spic son of a bitch! Tell me about that seventeen-year-old blonde you killed last week!”

“I dinn kill—”

Havilland hit him again, throwing his huge fist at Sixto’s head. He caught Sixto under the eye, and the boy fell to the floor, and Havilland kicked him with the point of his shoe.

“Get up!”

“I dinn—”

Havilland kicked him again. The boy was sobbing now. He climbed to his feet, and Havilland punched him once in the stomach and then again in the face. Sixto crumpled against the wall, sobbing wildly.

“Why’d you kill her?”

Sixto couldn’t answer. He kept shaking his head over and over again, sobbing. Havilland seized his jacket front and began pounding the boy’s head against the wall.

“Why, you friggin spic? Why? Why? Why?”

But Sixto only kept shaking his head, and after a while his head lolled to one side, and he was unconscious.

Havilland studied him for a moment. He let out a deep sigh, went to the washbasin in the corner, and washed the blood from his hands. He lighted a cigarette then and went to the table, sitting on it and thinking. It was a damn shame, but he didn’t think Sixto was the man they wanted. They still had him on the Carmen thing, of course, but they couldn’t hang this mugger kill on him. It was a damn shame.

In a little while, Havilland unlocked the door and went next door to Clerical. Miscolo looked up from his typewriter.

“There’s a spic next door,” Havilland said, puffing on his cigarette.

“Yeah?” Miscolo said.

Havilland nodded. “Yeah. Fell down and hurt himself. Better get a doctor, huh?”

In another part of the city, a perhaps more orthodox method of questioning was being undertaken by Detectives Meyer and Temple.

Meyer, personally, was grateful for the opportunity. In accordance with Lieutenant Byrnes’s orders, he had been questioning known sex offenders until he was blue in the face. It was not that he particularly disliked questioning; it was simply that he disliked sex offenders.

The sunglasses found alongside the body of Jeannie Paige had borne a small “C” in a circle over the bridge. The police had contacted several jobbers, one of whom identified the © as the trademark of a company known as Candrel, Inc. Byrnes had extricated Meyer and Temple from the sticky, degenerate web at the 87th and sent them shuffling off to Majesta, where the firm’s factory was located.

The office of Geoffrey Candrel was on the third floor of the factory, a soundproofed rectangle of knotty-pine walls and modern furniture. The desk seemed suspended in space. A painting on the wall behind the desk resembled an electronic computing machine with a nervous breakdown.

Candrel was a fat man in a big leather chair. He looked at the broken sunglasses on his desk, shoved at them with a pudgy forefinger as if he were prodding a snake to see if it were still alive.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was thick. It rumbled up out of his huge chest. “Yes, we manufacture those glasses.”

“Can you tell us something about them?” Meyer asked.

“Can I tell you something about them?” Candrel smiled in a peculiarly superior manner. “I’ve been making frames for all kinds of glasses for more than fourteen years now. And you ask me if I can tell you something about them? My friend, I can tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Well, can you tell us—”

“The trouble with most people,” Candrel went on, “is that they think it’s a simple operation to make a pair of sunglass frames — or any kind of eyeglass frames, for that matter. Well, gentlemen, that’s simply not true. Unless you’re a sloppy workman who doesn’t give a damn about the product you’re putting out. Candrel gives a damn. Candrel considers the consumer.”

“Well, perhaps you can—”

“We get this sheet stock first,” Candrel said, ignoring Meyer. “It’s called zyl — that’s the trade term for cellulose nitrate, optical grade. We die-stamp the fronts and temple shapes from that sheet stock.”

“Fronts?” Meyer said.

“Temples?” Temple said.

“The front is the part of the eyeglass that holds the lenses. The temples are the two gizmos you put over your ears.”

“I see,” Meyer said. “But about these glasses—”

“After they’re stamped, the fronts and temples are machined,” Candrel said, “to put the grooves in the rims and to knock off the square edges left by the stamping. Then the nose pads are cemented to the fronts. After that, a cutter blends the pads to the fronts in a ‘phrasing’ operation.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Nor is that the end of it,” Candrel said. “To blend the nose pads further, they are rubbed on a wet pumice wheel. Then the fronts and temples go through a roughing operation. They’re put into a tumbling barrel of pumice, and the tumbling operation takes off all the rough machine marks. In the finishing operation, these same fronts and temples are put into a barrel of small wooden pegs — about an inch long by three-sixteenths of an inch wide — together with a lubricant and our own secret compound. The pegs slide over the fronts and temples, polishing them.”

“Sir, we’d like to get on with—”

“After that,” Candrel said, frowning, a man obviously not used to being interrupted, “the fronts and temples are slotted for hinges, and then the hinges are fastened with shields, and then fronts are assembled to temples with screws. The corners are mitered, and then the ends are rounded on a pumice wheel in the rubbing room. After that—”

“Sir—”

“After that, the frames are washed and cleaned and sent to the polishing room. All of our frames are hand-polished, gentlemen. A lot of companies simply dip the frames into a solvent to give it a polished look. Not us. We hand-polish them.”

“That’s admirable, Mr. Candrel,” Meyer said, “but—”

“And when we insert plain glass lenses, we use a six-base lens, a lens that has been ground and is without distortion. Our plano sunglasses are six-diopter lenses, gentlemen. And remember, a six-base lens is optically correct.”

“I’m sure it is,” Meyer said tiredly.

“Why, our best glasses retail for as high as twenty dollars,” Candrel said proudly.

“What about these?” Meyer asked, pointing to the glasses on Candrel’s desk.

“Yes,” Candrel said. He poked at the glasses with his finger again. “Of course, we also put out a cheaper line. We injection-mold them out of polystyrene. It’s a high-speed die-casting operation done under hydraulic pressure. Semiautomatic, you understand. And, of course, we use less expensive lenses.”

“Are these glasses a part of your cheaper line?” Meyer asked.

“Ah… yes.” Candrel seemed suddenly embarrassed.

“How much do they cost?”

“We sell them to our jobbers for thirty-five cents a pair. They probably retail anywhere from seventy-five cents to a dollar.”

“What about your distribution?” Temple asked.

“Sir?”

“Where are these glasses sold? Any particular stores?”

Candrel pushed the glasses clear to the other side of his desk, as if they had grown suddenly leprous.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you can buy these glasses in any five-and-ten-cent store in the city.”