87th Precinct 09 - Til Death

by McBain, Ed

  “What do you think?” O’Brien said.

  “Sounds as if it might be him. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have some luck in the delicatessen.”

  They did not have any luck in the delicatessen.

  The man behind the counter wore bifocals, had been busy all day waiting on Sunday customers, and wouldn’t have known a trombone case from a case of crabs, good day.

  Meyer and O’Brien went out onto the sidewalk.

  “Where to?”

  Meyer shook his head. “Boy,” he said, “this suddenly seems like a very big neighborhood.”

  Ben Darcy lay on his back in the bushes.

  Dusk was coming on, staining the sky with purple. In the woods, the insects were beginning their night song. The city looked skyward and greeted the impending night with a sigh; this was Sunday and tomorrow was another workday. And in the city, in the imposing steel and concrete structures of Isola, in the teeming streets of Calm’s Point, in the suburban outlands of Riverhead, the beginning of night seemed to bring with it a touch of peace, a restfulness that bordered on weary resignation. Another day was moving into the coolness of the past. The moon would rise, and stars would pepper the skies, and the city would suddenly be ablaze with light.

  Ben Darcy seemed to be a part of the peacefulness of dusk. Lying on his back on the ground beneath the big maple that dominated the surrounding area of bushes, he looked like nothing more than a summer sleeper, a dreamer, a sky-watcher, the classic boy with the strand of straw between his teeth. His arms were outstretched. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be asleep, at peace with himself and with the world.

  The top of his skull was bleeding.

  Stooping down beside him quickly, Carella saw the cut at once, and his fingers moved to it rapidly, parting the hair, feeling the swelling around the gash. The cut was not a deep one or a long one, nor did it bleed profusely. It sat in the exact center of Darcy’s skull, and the area surrounding it had swelled to the size of a walnut. In the growing darkness, Steve Carella sighed audibly. He was tired, very tired. He did not enjoy chasing specters. I should have been a prizefighter, he thought. A good dirty sport where the combat is clearly stated from go, where the rules are set down by an impartial observer, where the arena is circumscribed from the very beginning, where the opponent is plainly visible and plainly identified as the opponent, the only man to beat, the only enemy.

  Why the hell would anyone ever choose police work as his profession, he wondered.

  We’re dealing with destruction, he thought, and the destruction is always secret and our job is not so much preventing it as it is discovering it after it has happened. We seek out the destroyers, but this doesn’t make us creators because we are involved in a negative task, and creation is never a negative act. Teddy, sitting out there, with a baby inside her, creating with no effort, creating by nature, is accomplishing more than I’ll accomplish in fifty years of police work. Why would anyone ever want to get involved with a son of a bitch who saws through the tie rods of an automobile or kills the neighbor, Birnbaum, or takes a whack at the skull of Darcy? Why would anyone choose as his profession, as the job to which he devotes most of his waking hours, a task that must necessarily bring him into contact with the destroyers?

  Why would anyone deliberately involve himself in the murky, involuted motivational processes of the criminal mind, dirty his hands with the crawling specimens of humanity who parade into that squadroom every day of the week, every week of the year?

  Why would anyone want to become a street cleaner?

  I will tell you some things, Steve, he thought.

  I will tell you first that philosophy is unbecoming to a cop who almost flunked Philosophy I in school.

  I will tell you secondly that free choice is something that is very rarely offered to human beings. You became a cop because you became a cop, and you couldn’t tell yourself why without spending hours on a head shrinker’s couch, and even then you might not know. And you remain a cop—why?

  Because—discounting the obvious knowledge that a man must feed and clothe his wife and his family, discounting any insecurities about facing the world outside the police department, scrounging for a job when I’m no longer a boy, discounting any of this—I want to be a cop.

  Not because someone has to clean the streets. Maybe no one has to clean the streets at all. Maybe civilization would move along just as briskly if the streets were filthy as hell.

  But the destroyers make me angry. When the destroyers take life from a man like Birnbaum, they make me mad as hell! And so long as destruction makes me angry, I’ll continue to be a cop, I’ll continue commuting to a scroungy squadroom in perhaps the world’s worst neighborhood, listening to bum jokes delivered by other cops, listening to corny humor, and telephones ringing, and complaints from the gentle people who—though they may not all be creators—are not destroyers.

  In the deepening darkness, he grinned wanly.

  You may not have realized it, Father Paul, he thought, but you had a very religious man in your rectory today.

  He left Ben Darcy lying on his back, and he went to the house for some water and some damp rags.

  The wedding jokes were beginning.

  Standing before the long bridal table upon which rested the trays of dolci and the huge wedding cake and—at the far end—two bottles of wine marked separately and respectively for the bride and the groom, Tommy listened to the wedding jokes with mixed feelings. He was embarrassed by them, but he was also secretly pleased by them. He knew he was supposed to be embarrassed by them, but he was also secretly pleased by them. He knew he was supposed to be embarrassed and so each new joke brought a flush to his boyish features. But at the same time, he secretly felt as if he had achieved manhood at last. Finally, he was being granted admission to a worldwide fraternity as a junior member. Years from now, perhaps, he would attend someone else’s wedding and tell the same ritual jokes. The knowledge pleased him, even though he’d heard most of the jokes before. The jokes had started with that hoary old standby of the man who leaves his umbrella in a hotel room that is later occupied by a honeymoon couple. About to retrieve the umbrella as they enter the room, he ducks into a closet and is forced to listen to their cooing lovemaking. Finally in desperation, after listening to the groom asking the bride questions like “And whose eyes are these?”—”Yours, darling”—”And whose lovely lips are these?”—”Yours, sweetheart”—on and on, sparing no part of the anatomy, the joke tinged with the delicious unsavoriness of total possession and the anticipation of an outerdirected striptease, the man in the closet shouts, “When you get to the umbrella, it’s mine!”

  Tommy laughed. The joke had a beard, but he laughed anyway and he blushed slightly, and he watched his brother-in-law emerge from the bushes at the side of the property and rush toward the house, and then another joke started, the one about the midget who marries the circus fat lady, and this was followed by another, and then another, and then the jokes left the realm of scripted humor and took on an ad lib quality, each prankster, both married man and bachelor, coming up with top-of-the-head advice on the proper hotel-room behavior. Someone threw in the hoary story about the white horse who married a zebra and spent the entire honeymoon trying to take off her striped pajamas, and Tommy laughed, and someone advised him to bring along a lot of magazines because Angela would undoubtedly spend three hours in the bathroom preparing herself for the biggest moment of her life, and someone else said, “He only wishes it were the biggest moment,” and though Tommy didn’t quite get this one, he laughed anyway.

  “What hotel are you going to, Tom?” one of the circle of jokesters asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Tommy said, shaking his head.

  “Come on!” someone shouted. “You don’t think we’d barge in on your honeymoon, do you?”

  “I do,” Tommy said.

  “Old pals like us? Don’t you want us to visit you?”

  “No!”

  “No? Why not? Have you made other plans for
this evening?”

  And so it went. And all the while, Jody Lewis scampered around the circle of jokesters, catching the expression on Tommy’s face each time a new joke was told, the shutter clicking, clicking, to preserve the blush or the grin or the fleeting look of realized manhood for posterity, Our Wedding Day.

  “Don’t forget that wine when you leave!” someone shouted.

  “What wine?”

  “Somebody brought you wine. At the end of the table. One for the bride and one for the groom.”

  “But don’t drink too much, Tommy. Too much wine, and

  you’re going to have a very disappointed bride!” “Just a sip, Tommy! A toast! And then to work!” The crowd laughed. Jody Lewis kept his shutter clicking.

  Night was falling with a frightening rush.

  Oona Blake crouched on the floor over Cotton Hawes, her skirt pulled back over powerfully beautiful legs, the top of her dress torn to the waist. Darkness had invaded the small attic room of the Birnbaum house. The vanishing light of daytime filtered feebly through the attic window, catching her blond hair and then the white exposed flank of her thigh as she knotted the ropes securely around Hawes’s body and then went through his pockets.

  Marty Sokolin, chewing on his cigar, one huge hand around the rifle barrel, watched her. She scared him somewhat. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever known in his life, but she moved with the power of a Nike rocket, and she scared him sometimes; but she excited him, too. Watching her flip open the man’s wallet, watching her hands as they quickly went through the contents, he was frightened and excited.

  “A cop,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “A badge, and an ID card. Why didn’t you search him before?”

  “I was too busy. What’s a cop doing here? How’d a cop—?”

  “They’re crawling all over the place,” Oona said.

  “Why?” His eyes blinked. He bit down more fiercely on the cigar.

  “I shot a man,” she answered, and he felt a tiny lurch of fear.

  “You…?”

  “I shot a man, an old fart who was heading for this house. You told me to keep people away from here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but to shoot a man! Oona, why’d you—?”

  “Aren’t you here to shoot a man?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did you want someone coming up here?”

  “No, Oona, but it’s brought cops. I’ve got a record, for Christ’s sake. I can’t—”

  “So have I,” she snapped, and he watched the sudden fury in her eyes, and again he was frightened. Sweat erupted on his upper lip. In the gathering gloom, he watched her, frightened, excited.

  “Do you want to kill Giordano?” she said.

  “Yes. I…I do.”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Jesus, Oona, I don’t know. I don’t want cops. I don’t want to go to jail again.”

  “That’s not what you told me.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You said you wanted him dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you’d never be able to rest until he was dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “You asked for my help. I gave it to you. Without me, you wouldn’t know how to wipe your nose. Who got the apartment near the photography shop? Me. Who suggested this house? Me. Without me, you’d be carrying your goddamn grudge to the grave. Is that what you want? To carry the grudge to your grave?”

  “No, Oona, but—”

  “Are you a man…or what are you?”

  “I’m a man.”

  “You’re nothing. You’re afraid to shoot him, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve already killed for you, do you know that? I’ve already killed a man to protect you. And now you’re chickening out. What are you? A man or what?”

  “I’m a man!” Sokolin said.

  “You’re nothing. I don’t know why I took up with you. I could have had men, real men. You’re not a man.”

  “I’m a man!”

  “Then kill him!”

  “Oona! It’s just—there are cops now. There’s a cop here, right with us—”

  “There’ll be fireworks at eight o’clock…”

  “Oona, if I kill him, what do I accomplish? I know I said I…”

  “…a lot of noise, a lot of explosions. If you fire then, the shot won’t even be heard. No one will hear it.”

  “…wanted him dead, but now I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for Artie’s getting shot. Maybe he didn’t know…”

  “You go to the window, Marty. You pick him up in your sights.”

  “…there was a sniper in the trees. I’m clean now. I’m out of jail. Why should I fool around with something like this?”

  “You wait for the fireworks to start. You squeeze the trigger. He’s dead, and we take off.”

  “And the cop laying there on the floor? He’s seen both of us,” Sokolin protested.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Oona Blake said, and she grinned. “It’ll be a real pleasure to take care of him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Get to the window, Marty.”

  “Oona—”

  “Get to the window and get it over with. As soon as the fireworks start. Get it over and done with. And then come with me, Marty, come with me, baby, come to Oona, baby, Marty, get it over with, get it over with, get it out of your system!”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Oona.”

  Antonio Carella had perhaps drunk too much wine, or danced too strenuously. In any case, he was having difficulty standing. He had carried a chair to the center of the dance floor, and he stood on the chair now, wobbling unsteadily, his arms flailing the air, and he tried to maintain his balance and signal for silence simultaneously. The wedding guests had also drunk too much—perhaps—or perhaps danced too strenuously. They were a long time coming to silence and perhaps they never would have were it not for the fear that Tony Carella would fall off that chair unless someone began listening to him soon.

  “I’m a very lucky man today,” Tony said to the hushed guests. “My daughter Angela has married a wonderful boy. Tommy! Tommy? Where’s Tommy?”

  He climbed down off the chair and searched for Tommy in the crowd, dragging him into the light that spilled from the bandstand.

  “My son-in-law!” he shouted, and the wedding guests applauded. “A wonderful boy, and a wonderful wedding, and a wonderful night! And now, we going to explode fireworks. We going to make the whole night explode for my two children! Is everybody ready?”

  And the wedding guests cheered as Marty Sokolin lowered the muzzle of the rifle to the window sill and leveled his sights on Tommy Giordano’s head.

  If police work is half doggedness and half patience, it is also half luck and half blind faith. Four halves, obviously, equal two wholes. Two holes were what Meyer Meyer and Bob O’Brien needed in their heads the way they needed the legwork they were doing in tracking down Marty Sokolin.

  Meyer Meyer would have been extremely content to have lingered in the delicatessen sniffing of the savory smells there, rather than to leave the place in search of a potential killer. The smells of a delicatessen, especially a kosher deli, had always been mysterious, intriguing scents to Meyer. When he was a boy, he had no idea that people actually went into delicatessens to make purchases. His mother would take him for a stroll away from their Gentile neighborhood, into the nearest ghetto, and there she would seek out a delicatessen. Standing in the door to the shop, she would allow little Meyer to sniff to his heart’s content. Until the time he was fifteen and bought his first nickel a shtickel, Meyer held the unshakable conviction that delicatessens were for smelling only. He still felt rather uneasy when making a purchase in one, somewhat like a heathen defiling a temple.

  He did not make a purchase in the delicatessen on Dover Plains Avenue. He made inquiries concerning the man with the trombone case, was promptly rebuffed, and then wen
t into the street in further search of what was beginning to look like a rather elusive needle. The search was conducted in a very scientific manner based on established investigatory technique. The search was conducted by stopping passers-by and asking them if they had seen a man carrying a trombone case.

  Now such painstaking investigatory technique is surely recommended by Scotland Yard and the Nassau County Police and the Sureté and the Gestapo. It is calculated to separate, through a process of carefully phrased questions (such as, “Did you see a man with a trombone case walk by here?) those citizens who had and those who had not witnessed the passage of the sought suspect. It was important, of course, to snap off the questions with the properly authoritative and universally accepted police tone. Police tone is a part of police procedure. The sentence, “Did you see a man with a trombone case walk by here?” when delivered by a layman untrained in police tone could result in a plethora of confused answers. When delivered by a man who had attended the Police Academy, a man well versed in the ways of investigatory technique, a man skilled at the art of interrogation, the question assumed significance. Faced with its scientific inevitability, the person questioned was skillfully led to the point where only one of two answers was possible: yes or no. I did, or I did not see a man with a trombone case walk by here.

  Meyer Meyer and Bob O’Brien, skilled inquisitors that they were, received a total of twelve “no’s” before they received a “yes.”

  The “yes” led them up a street parallel to Charles Avenue. On the front stoop of a two-story frame dwelling, they got their second “yes” and began to feel that their luck she was running good. The second “yes” came from an old man with an ear trumpet.

  “Did you see a man with a trombone case walk by here?” Meyer asked scientifically.

  “What?” the old man yelled. “I’m a little deaf.”

  “A man with a trombone case?”

  “Got one inside if you want to use it,” the old man said.

  “A trombone?”