The Pusher

Chapter Fourteen

In the heart of the city, the shoppers went about their business. The store fronts glowed like hot pot-belly stoves, inviting the cold citizens to come in and toast awhile, come in and browse awhile, come in and buy a little. The swank shops lining plush Hall Avenue were decked not in holly but in an austerely shrieking display of Christmas white and red and green electrical wizardry. The front of one department store was covered with a two-story-high display of blue angels, and the outdoor gardens across the street picked up the theme, multiplied it by a hundred, splashed the concrete with ethereal winged messengers of the Lord, escorting the passers-by to the giant Christmas tree near the skating rink. The tree climbed to the sky, ablaze with red and blue and yellow globes as big as a man's head, competing with the stiff formality of the giant office buildings around it.

The other shops dripped with incandescence, molten Christmas trees fashioned of light, giant white wreaths, windows aglow with the pristine brilliance of a new snowfall. The shoppers hurried in the streets, their arms loaded with packages. The office parties were in full swing behind the stiff formal fronts of the buildings. File clerks kissed file clerks behind banks of file cabinets. Bosses lifted the skirts of secretaries, and promotions were promised, and raises were bandied about like memo slips, and boys from the shipping department tilted glasses with executives from wood-paneled offices. There were lipstick stains, and Scotch stains, and hurried phone calls to waiting wives, and hurried phone calls to husbands who were enjoying their own Christmas parties behind the equally stiff fronts of other buildings. There was happiness of a sort because this was late Friday afternoon, December 22nd, and this was the culmination of a long year's waiting. And the accountant who'd had his discreet marital eye on the pretty, young, blond receptionist could now greet her with more than a polite "Good morning." Sharing a highball by the water cooler, his arm could encircle her waist in Christmas friendliness. Her head could rest upon his shoulder in yuletide camaraderie. He could take her lips beneath the mistletoe, and he could do all this without the slightest feeling of guilt because the Christmas Party was an established tradition of the American culture. Husbands went to Christmas parties, and wives were never invited. Wives did not expect to be invited. For one day a year, the marital contract was temporarily revoked. Christmas parties were joked about later, the way a person will joke about a bloody dagger on his living-room coffee table, unwilling to acknowledge how it got there.

And in the streets, the shoppers walked. Time was short, and time was running out. The advertising executives who had goaded the public since before Thanksgiving were now busy getting drunk in their offices. But the public, caught in the commercial machinations of a holiday that had somehow grown out of all proportion to the simple birth in Bethlehem it represented, hurried and scurried and wondered and worried. Had Josephine's gift been expensive enough? Were all the Christmas cards mailed? What about the tree, shouldn't the tree have been bought by now?

Beneath it all, despite the gaudy plot of the advertising master minds, despite the frantic commercial rat race it had become, there was something else. There was, for some of the people, a feeling they could not have described if they'd wanted to. This was Christmas. This was the holiday season. Some of the people saw through the sham and the electrical glitter and the skinny Santa Clauses with straggly beards lining Hall Avenue. Some of the people felt something other than what the advertising men wanted them to feel. Some of the people felt good, and kind, and happy to be alive. Christmas did that to some people.

And so the city was drunken, and the city was goaded into near panic, and the streets were jammed with shoppers, and maybe the concrete looked cold and stiff and aloof—but it was the most wonderful city in the world, and it was never more wonderful than at Christmastime.

"This is Danny Gimp," the man told the desk sergeant. "I want to speak to Detective Carella."

The desk sergeant didn't enjoy talking to stool pigeons. He knew that Danny Gimp often came up with good information, but he considered all stool pigeons unclean, and it was an offense just talking to them.

"Detective Carella isn't here," the desk sergeant said.

"Do you know where I can reach him?" Danny asked. Danny was a man who'd been stooling for the police for as long as he could remember. He knew he was not respected for his talkative traits among members of the underworld, but the ensuing ostracism did not disturb him. Danny made his living as an informer, and quite curiously, he enjoyed helping the police. He had had polio as a child, with the result that one leg still carried a slight limp. His real surname was Nelson but very few people knew that, and even his mail came addressed to Danny Gimp. He was fifty-four years old, and very small all over, looking more like an undernourished adolescent than a full-grown man. His voice was high and reedy, and his face bore hardly any of the wrinkles or other telltale signs of age. He could not honestly say he liked cops, even though he liked helping them. There was one cop he did like. That cop was Steve Carella.

"Why do you want to reach him?" the desk sergeant asked.

"I think I may have some dope for him."

"What kind of dope?"

"When did you get promoted to the detective division?" Danny asked.

"If you want to get smart, stoolie, you can get off the line."

"I want Carella," Danny said. "Will you tell him I called?"

"Carella ain't taking any messages," the desk sergeant said.

"What do you mean?"

"He got shot this afternoon. He's dying."

"What!"

"You heard me."

"What!" Danny said again, stunned. "Steve got… Are you kidding me?"

"I'm not kidding you."

"Who shot him?"

"That's what we'd like to know."

"Where is he?"

"General Hospital. Don't bother going down. He's on the critical list, and I doubt if they're letting him talk to stoolies."

"He's not really dying," Danny said, almost as if to reassure himself. "Listen, he's not really dying, is he?"

"They found him half-froze and almost bloodless. They've been pumping plasma into him, but he took three slugs in the chest, and it don't look good."

"Ah, listen," Danny said. "Ah, Jesus." He was silent for a while.

"You finished, stoolie?"

"No, I… General Hospital, did you say?"

"Yeah. I told you, stoolie, don't bother going down. It'd make you uncomfortable. Half the bulls on the squad are there."

"Yeah," Danny said thoughtfully. "Jesus, that's a tough break, ain't it?"

"He's a good cop," the desk sergeant said simply.

"Yeah," Danny said. He was silent again and then he said, "Well, so long."

"So long," the desk sergeant said.

Because of the sergeant's warning, Danny Gimp did not get to the hospital until the next morning. He wrestled with the problem all that Friday night, wondering if his presence would be welcome, wondering if Carella would even recognize him. And even if Carella was in condition to say hello, Danny doubted if he'd want to. They had a going business arrangement, but Danny was keenly aware of the fact that an informer is not the most respected of men. Carella might very well spit at him.

He wrestled with his problem, and he didn't sleep that night. He awoke on Saturday morning with the problem still fresh in his mind. He did not know why, but he wanted to see Steve Carella before he died. He wanted to see him and say hello, and maybe shake hands with him. Perhaps it was the Christmas season. Whatever it was, Danny took some coffee and a doughnut, and then he dressed carefully, putting on his good suit and a clean white shirt and choosing his tie carefully as well. He wanted to look respectable. He was going to the hospital on a respectable visit, and the entire unrespectability of his life seemed suddenly in very sharp focus. It seemed very important to him that he show his concern for Steve Carella, and it seemed equally important that Carella should respect him for it.

On the way to the hospital, he bought a box of candy. The candy gave him a good many moments of doubt. There would undoubtedly be cops at the hospital. Hadn't the desk sergeant said so? And wouldn't it look stupid for a stool pigeon to come carrying a box of candy? He almost threw the candy away, but he did not. When a man went to visit someone in the hospital, he brought something, something to say "You're still with us, and you'll get well." Danny Gimp was entering the polite, respectable world of civilized society, and so he would obey the rules of that society.

The sky beyond the hospital was very gray on that Saturday, December 23rd. It looked like snow, and Danny thought fleetingly of the hundreds of people who were wishing for a white Christmas, and he felt a total sadness as he pushed through the hospital's revolving doors and entered the wide white entrance lobby. There was a big Christmas wreath on the wall opposite the reception desk, but there was nothing festive about the hospital itself. The girl behind the desk was polishing her nails. On a bench opposite the desk, an old man sat with his hat in his hands, glancing anxiously every few moments toward the Emergency Room down the corridor.

Danny took off his hat and walked to the desk. The girl did not look up. She painted her nails with the precision and skill of a Japanese dollmaker.

Danny cleared his throat. "Miss?" he said.

"Yes," the girl said, working the brush over her extended forefinger, covering the moon, splashing the oval with carmine brilliance.

"I'd like to see Steve Carella," Danny said. "Stephen Carella."

"What is your name, sir?" the girl asked.

"Daniel Nelson," he replied.

The girl put down the brush, held the fingers of the painted hand widespread, and reached for a typewritten sheet with the other hand. She reached for it automatically, without even looking for it. She put it down in front of her, studied it, and said, "Your name's not on this list, sir."

"What list?" Danny asked.

"Mr. Carella is in a critical condition," the girl said. "We are admitting only members of his family and, because of the nature of the case, certain people from the police department. I'm sorry, sir."

"Is he all right?" Danny asked.

The girl looked at him dispassionately. "It's not usual to put a man on the critical list unless we feel his condition is critical," she said.

"When… when will you know?" Danny asked.

"I have no way of telling, sir. He may rally, or he may not. I'm afraid it's out of our hands."

"Is it all right if I wait?"

"Certainly, sir," she said. "You may sit on the bench there, if you like. It may be some time, you realize."

"I realize," Danny said. "Thank you."

He wondered why one of the few honest emotions he'd ever felt should be frustrated this way by a young chippie who was more interested in painting her nails than in life and death. He shrugged, blaming bureaucracy, and then went to sit on the bench alongside the old man. The old man turned to him almost instantly.

"My daughter cut her hand," he said.

"Um?" Danny said.

"She was opening a can, and she cut her hand. Is that dangerous? A cut from a tin can, I mean?"

"I don't know," Danny said.

"I heard it was. They're dressing the cut in there now. She was bleeding like a pig. I hope it isn't dangerous."

"She'll be all right," Danny said. "Don't worry."

"Well, I sure hope so. Did you come here to see somebody?"

"Yes," Danny said.

"A friend?"

"Well," Danny said. He half shrugged, and then began reading the list of ingredients on the candy box, wondering what lecithin was.

In a little while, the girl came out of the Emergency Room, her hand bandaged.

"Are you all right?" her father asked.

"Yes," the girl said. "They gave me a lollipop."

Together, they went out of the hospital.

Alone, Danny Gimp sat on the bench, waiting.

Teddy Carella sat in the room with her husband, watching him. The blinds were drawn, but she could see his face clearly in the dimness, the mouth open, the eyes closed. Beside the bed, the plasma ran from an upturned bottle, slid through a tube, and entered Carella's arm. He lay without stirring, the blankets pulled up over the jagged wounds in his chest. The wounds were dressed now, but they had leaked their blood, they had done their damage, and he lay pale and unmoving, as if death were already inside him.

No, she thought, he won't die.

Please God, please dear God, don't let this man die, please.

Her thoughts ran freely, and she didn't realize she was praying because her thoughts sounded only like thoughts to her, simple thoughts, the thoughts a girl thinks. But she was praying.

She was remembering how she'd met Carella, the day he'd come to the small office she'd worked for after they'd reported a burglary. She could remember exactly how he had come into the room, he and another man, a detective who was later transferred to another precinct, a detective whose face she could no longer remember. She had been concerned only with the face of Steve Carella that day. He had entered the office, and he was tall, and he walked erect, and he wore his clothes as if he were a high-priced men's fashion model rather than a cop. He had showed her his shield and introduced himself, and she had scribbled on a sheet of paper, explaining that she could neither hear nor speak, explaining that the receptionist was out, that she was hired as a typist, but that her employer would see him in a moment, as soon as she went to tell him the police were there. His face had registered mild surprise. When she rose from her desk and went to the boss' office, she could feel his eyes on her all the way.

She was not surprised when he asked her out.

She had seen interest in his eyes, and so the surprise was not in his asking, the surprise was that he could find her interesting at all. She supposed, of course, that there were men who would try anything once, just for kicks. Why not a girl who couldn't hear or talk? Might be interesting. She supposed, at first, that this was what had motivated Steve Carella, but after their first date, she knew this wasn't the case at all. He was not interested in her ears or her tongue. He was interested in the girl Teddy Franklin. He told her so, repeatedly. It took her a long while to believe it, even though she intuitively suspected its truth.

She had gone to bed with Carella because going to bed with him seemed the natural thing to do. He asked her to marry him often, but she never quite believed he really wanted her for his wife. And then one day, belief came, the way belief suddenly comes, and she realized he really and truly did want her for his wife. They were married on August 19th, and this was December 23rd, and now he lay in a hospital bed, and it seemed he might die, it seemed possible he might die, the doctors had told her that her husband might die.

She did not concern herself with the unfairness of the situation. The situation was shockingly unfair, her husband should not have been shot, her husband should not now be fighting for his life on a hospital bed. The unfairness shrieked within her, but she did not concern herself with it, because what was done was done.

But he was good, and he was gentle, and he was her man, the only man in the world for her. There were those who held that any two people can make a go of it. If not one, then another. Throw them in bed together and things will work out all right. There's always another streetcar. Teddy did not believe this. Teddy did not believe that there was another man anywhere in the world who was as right for her as Steve Carella. Somehow, quite miraculously, he had been delivered to her doorstep, a gift, a wonderful gift.

She could not now believe he would be torn rudely from her. She could not believe it, she would not believe it. She had told him what she wanted for Christmas. She wanted him. She had said it earnestly, knowing he took it as jest, but she had meant every word of it. And now, her words were being hurled back into her face by a cruel wind. Because now she really wanted him for Christmas, now he was the only thing she really wanted for Christmas. Earlier, she had been secure when she asked for him, knowing she would certainly have him. But now, the security was gone, now there was left only a burning desire for her man to live. She would never again want anything more than Steve Carella.

And so, in the dimness of the room, she prayed, not knowing she was praying, and the words ran through her mind over and over and over again:

Let my husband live. Please let my husband live.

Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes went down to the lobby at six fifteen that evening. He had been waiting in the corridor outside Carella's room all day long, hoping he could get to see him again. He had seen Carella only for a brief moment before Carella went unconscious again.

Carella had whispered a word, and the word was "Gonzo."

But Carella could say nothing more about the pusher, and so Byrnes still had only a flimsy description, a description he'd got from the three kids Carella had pinched in the car that day. No one else had heard of Gonzo, so how could Byrnes possibly pick him up? If Carella died…

He had put the thought out of his mind, sitting in the corridor. He called the precinct every half hour. And every half hour, he called home. The precinct had nothing to report. There were no leads to the new death of Dolores Faured. There were no leads to the old deaths of Aníbal and Maria Hernandez. There were no leads to Gonzo.

Things weren't much better at home. Larry was still in the process of shaking his sickness. The doctor had come again, but nothing seemed to displease Byrnes' son more. Byrnes wondered if he would ever be cured, and he wondered if they would ever find the man or men who were committing murder in his precinct. It was two days before Christmas, but Christmas would be a bleak time this year.

At six fifteen, he left the corridor and went down to the lobby. He stopped at the reception desk and asked the girl there if there was a decent eating place in the neighborhood. She suggested a greasy spoon on Lafayette.

He was heading for the revolving doors when a voice called, "Lieutenant?"

Byrnes turned. He didn't recognize the man at first. The man was small and thin, and he carried a box of candy under his arm, and he looked seedy, the way a normally seedy-looking person appears when he's trying to look dressed up. And then the face fell into place, and Byrnes said gruffly, "Hello, Danny. What're you doing here?"

"I came to see Carella," Danny said. He blinked and looked up at Byrnes.

"Yes?" Byrnes said, untouched.

"Yeah," Danny said. "How is he?"

"Bad," Byrnes said. "Look, Danny, you don't mind but I was on my way out to dinner. I'm kind of in a hurry."

"Sure, sure," Danny said.

Byrnes looked at him, and perhaps because it was almost Christmas, he added, "you know how it is. This Gonzo character shooting Carella hasn't…"

"Who? Did you say Gonzo? Is he the one shot St—Detective Carella?"

"That's the way it looks," Byrnes said.

"What are you telling me?" Danny asked. "A punk kid like that? He took Steve Carella?"

"Why?" Byrnes said. He was interested now, but only because Danny had referred to Gonzo as if he knew him. "What do you mean, a punk kid?"

"He can't be more than twenty, not the way I got it."

"What do you know, Danny?"

"Well, like Ste— Well, Carella asked me to scout around on Gonzo, and I didn't come up with nothing. I mean, I scouted around because Ste…"

"For Christ's sake, call him Steve," Byrnes said.

"Well, some cops are touchy about…"

"What have you got to say, Danny, goddamnit!"

"Even Steve don't like me calling him Steve," Danny admitted, and then—seeing the look on Byrnes' face—rapidly went on. "Nobody knew this Gonzo, you dig? So with me, it becomes a mathematical problem. How come these three kids coming to make a buy from this guy know him by Gonzo, and how come nobody on the scene knows him? It figures he ain't from the neighborhood, am I right?"

"Go ahead," Byrnes said, interested.

"Then I ask myself, if he ain't from the neighborhood, how come he inherits the dead Hernandez' junk route? This don't figure. I mean, it looks like he at least knew Hernandez, don't it? And if he knew Hernandez, maybe he knew the sister, too. This is the way I was thinking, Lieutenant, putting together all the things Steve told me."

"So what'd you get?"

"I got a guy who's a stranger in the neighborhood, but who maybe knew the Hernandezes. So I went to see the old lady, Mrs. Hernandez. I talked to her, you know, fishing around, figuring this Gonzo was maybe a cousin or something, you know these Puerto Ricans—strong family ties."

"Is he a cousin?"

"She don't make a cousin named Gonzo. She was talking true, too, because she knows me from the neighborhood. Gonzo don't ring a bell."

"I could have told you that, Danny. My men questioned Mrs. Hernandez also."

"But she tells me her son had a friend. He used to belong to the Sea Scouts, she says, and he used to go to these meetings up in Riverhead at a high school there. I check around, and I find out this is called the Junior Navals, a thing where some ex-Navy jerk got a bunch of kids together and slapped them in monkey suits so they could march around once a week. Only Hernandez don't go there to march. He goes there to push his junk. Anyway, the kid he knows there is called Dickie Collins."

"How does this tie with Gonzo?"

"Well, listen," Danny said. "I start snooping around about this Dickie Collins kid. He used to live around here, moved a while ago, his old man got a job selling storm doors up in Riverhead, so the little extra dough enabled him to get the hell out of the neighborhood. But Dickie's still got ties here, like that, you know? Comes back every now and then, and visits with the boys—including Aníbal Hernandez, the late. Met the sister a coupla times, too. Okay, so one night there's a card game. Small time, penny-ante stuff. This was only about two weeks ago, so it explains why there's nobody knows this Gonzo bit except four people, one of which is now dead. Luckily, I latched onto an alive one."

"Spill it," Byrnes said.

"There was four people in the game. A kid named Sam Di Luca, this kid Dickie Collins, Maria Hernandez, and an older guy from the neighborhood."

"Who was the older guy?"

"The Di Luca kid don't remember—and Maria Hernandez can't say any more. From what I could gather, they were shooting up that night, and this Di Luca's only sixteen, so he was probably blind. I got to explain this Di Luca kid, he calls himself Batman. That's his nickname. They all got nicknames, which is maybe why this Gonzo thing appealed."

"Get to the point, Danny."

"Okay. Sometime during the night, the four of them having a ball and playing cards, the older guy mentioned something about a cheap gunsel in the neighborhood. Well, it turns out this kid Dickie Collins, he's never heard the word 'gunsel.' It's kind of a dead expression, you know, Lieutenant? I mean, hardly anybody but oldtimers use it nowadays. Like 'torpedo,' you know? Out of fashion. So it's understandable, him being a snotnose kid, that he never heard it. But dig this. He says, 'A gonzo? What the hell's a gonzo?' Now this broke up the joint. Maria fell off her chair, and the older guy was practically rolling on the floor and Batman damn near wet his pants, it was so funny."

"I see," Byrnes said thoughtfully.

"So for the rest of the night, they kept calling him Gonzo. That's what this Batman tells me, anyway. But like there's only the four of them who know about it—just Batman, Maria, Dickie, and the older guy. And like Maria's pretty dead now, you know."

"Dickie Collins is Gonzo," Byrnes repeated blankly.

"Yeah. Batman, he forgot about the whole thing after that night. He was stinking drunk, anyway. But when I start asking about Gonzo, he remembers. The older guy, Christ alone knows who he is."

"Dickie Collins is Gonzo," Byrnes repeated blankly.

"Sure. Lives in Riverhead now. One of the cheaper neighborhoods there. You going to pick him up?"

"He shot Carella, didn't he?" Byrnes asked. He reached into his wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill. "Here, Danny," he said, offering the money.

Danny shook his head. "No, Lieutenant, thanks."

Byrnes stared at him unbelievingly.

"One thing you can do for me, though," Danny said, somewhat embarrassed.

"What's that?"

"I'd like to go upstairs. I'd like to see Steve."

Byrnes hesitated a moment. Then he walked to the desk and said, "I'm Detective-Lieutenant Byrnes. This man is working on the case with us. I'd like him to go upstairs."

"Yes, sir," the girl said, and then she looked over toward Danny Gimp who was smiling from ear to ear.