The Big Bad City

by McBain, Ed

  Our father who art in Heaven …

  And he fired.

  And now Brown was firing, too.

  And Sonny Cole fell to the ground.

  He called Lieutenant Byrnes at home and told him that he and Brown had shot and killed a man named Samson Wilbur Cole who’d been waiting outside his house with a Desert Eagle in his hand. He asked the lieutenant to advise the local precinct, and also Homicide and Internal Affairs, and he told the lieutenant that he and Brown would be waiting here at the scene for them.

  The shots had awakened everyone in the neighborhood and they were all out in the street in robes and pajamas when first a patrol car and then several unmarked cars arrived. This was now around seven in the morning. Some twenty minutes later, two more marked police cars arrived at the Carella house and spewed forth a glittering array of brass, all eager to talk to Carella and Brown before the media got hold of this. Much of the day, in fact, was spent downtown at Headquarters, with no less a worthy than the Commissioner himself instructing the two detectives on what they should say once the newspaper reporters and telecasters descended en masse.

  That evening, just as Carella and Brown were about to begin regretting their own ten minutes of television fame, The Cookie Boy was moving out of the spotlight and onto a 747 bound for London, where he had relatives in the meat-packing business. At six o’clock, while his plane was roaring down the runway for takeoff, a television journalist eager to turn the Sonny Cole story into a big TV drama of black-white tension and family vendetta, asked Carella how it had felt to kill the man once accused of murdering his father.

  Brown, taking the rap, said, “It was my bullet killed him.”

  Carella wondered exactly how he had felt.

  The truth was he didn’t know.

  He guessed he felt all right.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  PROUDLY PRESENTS

  FAT OLLIE’S BOOK

  ED McBAIN

  Available in hardcover

  from

  Simon & Schuster

  Turn the page for a preview of

  Fat Ollie’s Book….

  1

  RESPONSE TIME—from the moment someone at the Martin Luther King Memorial Hall dialed 911 to the moment Car 81, in the Eight-Eight’s Boy sector rolled up—was exactly four minutes and twenty-six seconds. Whoever had fired the shots was long gone by then, but a witness outside the Hall had seen someone running from the alleyway on its eastern end and he was eager to tell the police and especially the arriving TV crew all about it.

  The witness was very drunk.

  In this neighborhood, when you heard shots, you ran. In this neighborhood, if you saw someone running, you knew he wasn’t running to catch a bus. This guy wasn’t running. Instead, he was struggling to keep his balance, wobbling from one foot to the other. Nine, ten in the morning, whatever the hell it was already, and he could hardly stand up and he stunk like a distillery. He finally sat on one of the garbage cans in the alley. Behind him, rain water from a gutter dripped into a leader and flowed into an open sewer grate.

  Slurring his words, the drunk immediately told the responding officers from Car 81 that he was a Vietnam vet, mistakenly believing this would guarantee him a measure of respect. The blues saw only a scabby old black drunk wearing tattered fatigue trousers, an olive-drab tank top, and scuffed black penny loafers without socks. He was having trouble not falling off the garbage can, too. Grabbing for the wall, he told them he’d been about to go into the alley here, yessir, when he saw this guy come bustin out of it …

  “Turned left on St. Sab’s,” he said, “went runnin off uptown.”

  “Why were you going in the alley?” one of the blues asked.

  “To look inna garbage cans there.”

  “For what?”

  “Bottles,” he said. “Takes ’em back for deposit, yessir.”

  “And you say you saw somebody running out of the alley here?” the other blue asked. He was wondering why they were wasting time with this old drunk. They’d responded in swift order, but if they wasted any more time with him, their sergeant would think they’d been laggard. Then again, the TV cameras were rolling.

  “Came out the alley like a bat out of shit,” the drunk said, much to the dismay of the roving reporter from Channel Four, a pretty blonde wearing a short brown mini and a tan cotton turtleneck sweater. The camera was in tight on the man’s face at that moment, and the word “shit” meant they couldn’t use the shot unless they bleeped it out. Her program manager didn’t like to bleep out too many words because that smacked of censorship instead of fair and balanced reporting. On the other hand, the drunk was great comic relief. The Great Unwashed loved drunks. Put a drunk scene in a movie or a play, the audience still laughed themselves to death. If they only knew how many battered wives Honey had interviewed.

  “What’d he look like?” the first blue asked, mindful of the TV cameras and trying to sound like an experienced investigator instead of a rookie who’d just begun patrol duty eight months ago.

  “Young dude,” the witness said.

  “White, black, Hispanic?” the first blue asked, rapping the words out in a manner that he was sure would go over big with TV audiences, unmindful of the fact that the camera was on the witness and not himself.

  “White kid,” the witness said, “yessir. Wearin jeans and a whut chu call it, a ski parka, an’ white sneakers an’ a black cap with a big peak. Man, he was movin fast. Almost knocked me down.”

  “Did he have a gun?”

  “I dinn see no gun.”

  “Gun in his hand, anything like that?”

  “No gun, nosir.”

  “Okay, thanks,” the first blue said.

  “This is Honey Blair,” the Channel Four reporter said, “coming to you from outside King Memorial in Diamond-back.” She slit her throat with the forefinger of her left hand, said, “That’s it, boys,” and turned to her crew chief. “Get him to sign a release, will you?” she said. “I’m heading inside.” She was walking toward the glass entrance doors when the Vietnam vet, if indeed that’s what he was, asked, “Is they a reward?”

  Why didn’t you say that on the air? Honey thought.

  THIS WAS, and is, and always will be the big bad city.

  That will never change, Ollie thought. Never.

  And never was it badder than during the springtime. Flowers were blooming everywhere, even in the 88th Precinct, which by the way was no rose garden.

  Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks had good reason to be smiling on this bright April morning. He had just finished his book. Not finished reading it, mind you, but finished writing it. He was still rereading the last chapter, which was back at the apartment. He didn’t think it would need any more work, but the last chapter was often the most important one, he had learned, and he wanted to make sure it was just right. He was now transporting the positively perfect portion of the book to a copying shop not far from the Eight-Eight.

  He wondered if the sun was shining and the flowers were blooming next door in the 87th Precinct. He wondered if it was springtime in the Rockies, or in London, or in Paris or Rome, or in Istanbul, wherever that was. He wondered if flowers bloomed all over the world when a person finished his first work of fiction. Now that he was a bona fide writer in his own mind, Ollie could ponder such deep imponderables.

  His book, which was titled Report to the Commissioner, was securely nestled in a dispatch case that rested on the back seat of the car Ollie drove hither and yon around this fair city, one of the perks of being a minion of the law, ah yes. The windows of the Chevy sedan were open wide to the breezes that flowed from river to river. It was 10:30 on a lovely sunlit Monday morning. Ollie had signed in at 7:50 (five minutes late, but who was counting?), had taken care of some odds-and-ends bullshit on his desk, and was now on his way to the copying shop on Culver Avenue, not four blocks from the station house. So far, the day—

  “10-40,10-40 …”

  The dash radio.<
br />
  Rapid mobilization.

  “King Memorial, St. Sebastian and South Thirtieth, man with a gun. 10-40, 10-40, King Memorial …”

  Ollie hit the hammer.

  HE PARKED ILLEGALLY at the curb outside the Martin Luther King Memorial Hall, flipped down the visor on the driver’s side to show the card announcing Police Department authorization, locked the car, flashed the blue-and-gold tin at a uniformed grunt who was already approaching with a scowl and an attitude, said, “Weeks, Eighty-eighth Squad,” and barged right past him and the roaming television teams that were already thrusting microphones at anyone within range. He kept using his detective’s shield like a real warrior’s shield, holding it up to any barbarian who rose in his path, striding through the glass doors at the front of the building, and then into the marble entrance lobby, and then into the auditorium itself, where a handful of brass were already on the scene, had to be something important went down here.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t The Large Man,” a voice said.

  Once upon a time, Ollie’s sister Isabelle had referred to him as “large,” which he knew was a euphonium for “obese.” He had not taken it kindly. In fact, he had not bought her a birthday present that year. Ollie knew that there were colleagues in this city who called him “Fat Ollie,” but he took it as a measure of respect that they never called him this to his face. “Large Man” came close, though. He was ready to take serious offense when he recognized Detectives Monoghan and Monroe of the Homicide Division, already on the scene, and looking like somewhat stout penguins themselves. So someone had been aced. Big deal. Here in the Eight-Eight, it sometimes felt like someone got murdered every ten seconds. Monoghan was the one who’d called him “The Large Man.” Monroe was standing beside him, grinning as if in agreement.

  A pair of bookends in black—the color of death, the unofficial color of Homicide—the two jackasses were the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of law enforcement. Ollie wanted to punch them both in the mouth.

  “Who got it?” he asked.

  “Lester Henderson.”

  “You kidding me?”

  “Would we kid a master detective?” Monoghan said.

  “A super sleuth?” Monroe said, still grinning.

  “Stick it up your ass,” Ollie explained. “Anybody else from the Eight-Eight here?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “Then that puts me in charge,” Ollie said.

  In this city, the appearance of Homicide detectives at the scene of any murder was mandatory if not necessary. Presumably, they were here in an “advisory and supervisory capacity,” which meant they only got in the way of the precinct detectives who caught the squeal. Since Ollie was the so-called First Man Up, the case was his. All he had to do was file his reports in triplicate with Homicide, and then go his merry way. He did not think he needed to remind the M&Ms that this was a fact of police life in this fair metropolis, ah yes. They knew full well that except on television, the glory days of Homicide were long gone.

  The dead man lay on his back in a disorganized heap alongside a podium draped with red, white, and blue bunting. A sign above the podium read LESTER MEANS LAW. Ollie didn’t know what that meant. The dead man was wearing blue jeans, brown loafers without socks, and a pink crewneck cotton sweater. The front of the sweater was blotted with blood.

  “So what happened?” Ollie asked.

  “He got shot from the wings,” Monroe said. “They were setting up for the big rally tonight …”

  “Who was setting up?”

  “His people.”

  “All these people here?”

  “All these people.”

  “Too many people,” Ollie said.

  “Is right.”

  “What rally?”

  “Big fund raiser. Putting up lights, American flags, cameras, bunting, the whole shmear.”

  “So?”

  “So somebody fired half a dozen shots from the wings there.”

  “Is that an accurate count, or are you guessing?”

  “That’s what his aide told us. Five, six shots, something like that.”

  “His aide? Who’s that?”

  “Guy with all those reporters over there.”

  “Who let them in?”

  “They were already here when we responded,” Monroe said.

  “Terrific security,” Ollie said. “What’s the aide’s name?”

  “Alan Pierce.”

  The corpse lay in angular disarray, surrounded now by the Mobile Lab techs and the Medical Examiner, who was kneeling beside the dead man and delicately lifting his pink cotton sweater. Not fifteen feet from this concerned knot of professionals, a man wearing blue jeans similar to the dead man’s, and a blue denim shirt, and black loafers with blue socks stood at the center of a moving mass of reporters wielding pencils and pads, microphones, and flash cameras. A tall, slender man, who looked as if he jogged and swam and lifted weights and watched his calories—all the things Ollie considered a waste of time—Pierce appeared pale and stunned but nonetheless in control of the situation. Like a bunch of third graders waving their hands for a bathroom pass, the reporters swarmed around him.

  “Yes, Honey?” Pierce said, and a cute little blonde with a short skirt showing plenty of leg and thigh thrust a microphone in Pierce’s face. Ollie recognized her as Honey Blair, the roving reporter for the Eleven O’clock News.

  “Can you tell us if it’s true that Mr. Henderson had definitely decided to run for the Mayor’s office?” she asked.

  “I did not have a chance to discuss that with him before … before this happened,” Pierce said. “I can say that he met with Governor Carson’s people this weekend, and that was the main reason we flew upstate.”

  “We’ve heard rumors that you yourself have your eye on City Hall,” Honey said. “Is that so?”

  “This is the first I’m hearing of it,” Pierce said.

  Me, too, Ollie thought. But that’s very interesting, Mr. Pierce.

  Honey would not let it go.

  “Well, had you planned on running for Deputy Mayor? Assuming Mr. Henderson ran for Mayor?”

  “He and I never discussed that. Yes, David?”

  A man Ollie had seen a few times here and there around City Hall shoved a microphone at Pierce.

  “Sir,” he said, “can you tell us where you were when Mr. Henderson …?”

  “That’s it, thank you very much,” Ollie said, and strolled into the crowd. Flashing his shield like a proud father exhibiting a photograph of his firstborn, he said, “This is all under control here, let’s go home, okay?” and then signaled to one of the blues to get this mob out of here. Grumbling, the reporters allowed themselves to be herded offstage. Ollie stepped into Honey’s path just as she was turning to go, and said, “Hey, what’s your hurry? No hello?”

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  “Oliver Weeks,” he said. “The Eighty-eighth Precinct. Remember the zoo? The lady getting eaten by lions? Christmastime?”

  “Oh yes,” Honey said without the slightest interest, and turned again to go.

  “Stick around,” Ollie said. “We’ll have coffee later.”

  “Thanks, I have a deadline,” she said, and followed her tits offstage.

  Ollie showed Pierce his shield. “Detective Weeks,” he said, “Eighty-eighth Squad. Sorry to interrupt the conference, sir, but I’d rather you told us what you saw and heard.”

  “Yes, of course,” Pierce said.

  “You were here when Mr. Henderson got shot, is that it?”

  “I was standing right alongside him.”

  “Did you see the shooter?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You told the other detectives the shots came from the wings.”

  “That’s what it seemed like, yes.”

  “Oh? Have you changed your mind about that?”

  “No, no. I still think they came from the wings.”

  “But you didn’t see the shooter.”

  �
�No, I did not.”

  “Guy fired five, six shots, you didn’t see him.”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “I ducked when I heard the first shot.”

  “I woulda done the same thing,” Ollie said understandingly. “How about the second shot?”

  “Lester was falling. I tried to catch him. I wasn’t looking into the wings.”

  “And all the other shots?”

  “I was kneeling over Lester. I heard someone running off, but I didn’t see anything. There was a lot of confusion, you know.”

  “Were you planning to run for Deputy Mayor?”

  “I wasn’t asked to do so. I was only Lester’s aide.”

  “What does that mean, anyway?” Ollie asked. “Being an aide?”

  “Like his right hand man,” Pierce said.

  “Sort of like a secretary?”

  “More like an assistant.”

  “So you don’t have any political aspirations, is that correct?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then you do?”

  “I wouldn’t be in politics if I didn’t have political aspirations.”

  “Excuse me, Alan,” a voice said.

  Ollie turned to see a slight and narrow, precise little man wearing a blue blazer, a red tie, a white shirt, gray slacks, gray socks, and black loafers. Ever since the terrorist bombing at Clarendon Hall, everybody in this city dressed like an American flag. Ollie figured half of them were faking it.

  “We’re having a conversation here,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I wanted to ask …”

  “You know this man?” Ollie asked Pierce.

  “Yes, he’s our press rep. Josh Coogan.”

  “Excuse me, Alan,” Coogan said, “but I was wondering if I should get back to headquarters. I know there’ll be hundreds of calls …”

  “No, this is a crime scene,” Ollie said. “Stick around.”

  Coogan looked flustered for a moment. He was maybe twenty-four, twenty-five years old, but he suddenly looked like a high school kid who hadn’t done his assignment and had got called on while he was trying to catch a nap. Ollie didn’t have much sympathy for politicians, but all at once this seemed very sad here, two guys who all at once didn’t know what to do with themselves. He almost felt like taking them out for a beer. Instead, he said, “Were you here in the hall when all this happened, Mr. Coogan?”