Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 (13 page)

“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.

“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 policewoman 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 plainclothes 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.