Pusher

by Ed McBain

  The drinking, too, was beginning to get a little wilder. What the hell, man has to wet his whistle for the holidays, don't he? Sure he does, no law against that. But drinking often led to flaring tempers, and flaring tempers often led to the naked revelation of somewhat primitive emotions.

  What the hell, man has to slit another man's whistle for the holidays, don't he?

  Sure he does.

  But when the wetting of a whistle led to the slitting of a whistle, it very often led to the blowing of a whistle by a cop.

  All those whistles blowing gave Byrnes a headache. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate music; he simply found the whistle a particularly uninventive instrument.

  So Byrnes, though devoutly religious, was devoutly thankful that Christmas came but once a year. It only brought an influx of punks into the Squad Room, and God knew there were enough punks pouring in all year round. Byrnes did not like punks.

  He considered dishonesty a personal insult. He had worked for a living since the time he was twelve, and anyone who decided that working was a stupid way to earn money was in effect calling Byrnes a jackass. Byrnes liked to work. Even when it piled up, even when it gave him a headache, even when it included a suicide or homicide or whatever by a drug addict in his precinct, Byrnes liked it.

  When the telephone on his desk rang, he resented the intrusion. He lifted the receiver and said, "Byrnes here."

  The sergeant manning the switchboard behind the desk downstairs said, "Your wife, Lieutenant."

  "Put her on," Byrnes said gruffly.

  He waited. In a moment, Harriet's voice came onto the line.

  "Peter?"

  "Yes, Harriet," he said, and wondered why women invariably called him Peter, while men called him Pete.

  "Are you very busy?"

  "I'm kind of jammed, honey," he said, "but I've got a moment. What is it?"

  "The roast," she said.

  "What about the roast?"

  "Didn't I order an eight-pound roast?"

  "I guess so. Why?"

  "Did I or didn't I, Peter? You remember when we were talking about it and figuring how much we would need? We decided on eight pounds, didn't we?"

  "Yes, I think so. What's the matter?"

  "The butcher sent five."

  "So send it back."

  "I can't. I called him already and he said he's too busy."

  "Too busy?" Byrnes asked incredulously. "The butcher?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, what the hell else does he have to do but cut meat? I don't under—"

  "He'd probably exchange it if I took it down personally. What he meant was that he couldn't spare a delivery boy right now."

  "So take it down personally, Harriet. What's the problem?"

  "I can't leave the house, Peter. I'm expecting the groceries."

  "Send Larry down," Byrnes said patiently.

  "He's not home from school yet."

  "I'll be damned if that boy isn't the biggest scholar we ever…"

  "Peter, you know he's re…"

  "… had in the Byrnes family. He's always at school, always…"

  "… hearsing for a school play," Harriet concluded.

  "I've got half a mind to call the principal and tell him…"

  "Nonsense," Harriet said.

  "Well, I happen to like my kid home for supper!" Byrnes said angrily.

  "Peter," Harriet said, "I don't want to get into a long discussion about Larry or his adolescent pleasures, really I don't. I simply want to know what I should do about the roast."

  "Hell, I don't know. Do you want me to send a squad car to the butcher shop?"

  "Don't be silly, Peter."

  "Well, what then? The butcher, so far as I can tell, has committed no crime."

  "He's committed a crime of omission," Harriet said calmly.

  Byrnes chuckled in spite of himself. "You're too damn smart, woman," he said.

  "Yes," Harriet admitted freely. "What about the roast?"

  "Won't five pounds suffice? It seems to me we could feed the Russian Army with five pounds."

  "Your brother Louis is coming," Harriet reminded him.

  "Oh." Byrnes conjured up a vision of his mountainous sibling. "Yes, we'll need the eight pounds." He paused, thinking. "Why don't you call the grocer and ask him to hold off on delivery for a few hours? Then you can go down to the butcher and raise all sorts of Irish hell. How does that sound?"

  "It sounds fine," Harriet said. "You're smarter than you look."

  "I won a bronze scholarship medal in high school," Byrnes said.

  "Yes, I know. I still wear it."

  "Are we set on this roast thing, then?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "Not at all," Byrnes said. "About Larry…"

  "I have to rush to the butcher. Will you be home very late?"

  "Probably. I'm really swamped, honey."

  "All right, I won't keep you. Goodbye, dear."

  "Goodbye," Byrnes said, and he hung up. He sometimes wondered about Harriet, who was, by all civilized standards, a most intelligent woman. She could with the skill of an accountant balance a budget or wade through pages and pages of household figures. She had coped with a policeman-husband who was very rarely home, and had managed to raise a son almost singlehanded. And Larry, despite his damned un-Byrnesian leaning toward dramatics, was certainly a lad to be proud of. Yes, Harriet was capable, level-headed, and good in bed most of the time.

  And yet, on the other hand, something like this roast beef thing could throw her into a confused frenzy.

  Women. Byrnes would never understand them.

  Sighing heavily, he turned back to his work. He was reading through Carella's DD report on the dead boy when the knock sounded on his door.

  "Come," Byrnes said.

  The door opened. Hal Willis came into the room.

  "What is it, Hal?" Byrnes asked.

  "Well, this is a weird one," Willis said. He was a small man, a man who—by comparison with the other precinct bulls—looked like a jockey. He had smiling brown eyes, and a face that always looked interested, and he also had a knowledge of judo that had knocked many a cheap thief on his back.

  "Weird how?" Byrnes asked.

  "Desk sergeant put this call through. I took it. But the guy won't speak to anyone but you."

  "Who is he?"

  "Well, that's it. He wouldn't give his name."

  "Tell him to go to hell," Byrnes said.

  "Lieutenant, he said it's got something to do with the Hernandez case."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah."

  Byrnes thought for a moment, "All right," he said at last. "Have the call switched to my wire."

  Chapter Six

  It was not that Steve Carella had any theories.

  It was simply that the situation stank to high heaven.

  Aníbal Hernandez had been found dead at two o'clock on the morning of December 18th. That had been a Monday morning, and now it was Wednesday afternoon, two days later—and the situation still stank to high heaven.

  The coroner had reported that Hernandez died of an overdose of heroin, which was not an unseemly way for a hophead to meet his end. The syringe lying next to Hernandez' hands had been scrutinized for latent prints, and those prints were now being compared with the prints lifted from Hernandez' dead fingers.

  Carella, with dead certainty, was sure the prints would not match. Someone had tied that rope around Hernandez' neck after he was dead, and Carella was willing to bet that the same person had used that syringe to administer the fatal dose of heroin.

  Which situation brought up a few problems. Which problems combined to lend the entire situation its air of putrefaction.

  For assuming that someone wanted Hernandez dead, an assumption that seemed to be well-founded, and further assuming the someone had used an overloaded syringe of heroin as his murder weapon, why then was the murder weapon not removed from the scene of the crime?

  Or why then, for that matter, was the body
then hoisted by its own petard, more or less, in an attempt to stimulate a hanging suicide?

  These were the knotty trivialities that disturbed the normal thinking of Detective Steve Carella. He knew, of course, that there could be a thousand and one motives for murder in the tangled world of drug addiction. He knew, too, that someone unfamiliar with the ways of the coroner's office might innocently hope to palm off a poisoning as a hanging. But he further knew that every man and boy in the United States had been raised on the Fingerprint Legend. Commit a crime? Wipe off the prints, boy. The prints had not been wiped from the syringe. The prints were there, as big as life, waiting to be lifted and studied. The syringe was there, too, and if someone were trying to palm off a hanging, would he leave a syringe around? Could he be so stupid as to believe the cops wouldn't automatically connect the syringe to a possible death by overdose?

  Something stank.

  Everything stank.

  Carella had a sensitive nose and perhaps a sensitive mind. He walked the streets of the precinct, and he thought, and he wondered where he should begin because the right beginning was very often the most important time-saving device in detective work. And whereas he was, at the moment, primarily concerned with the Hernandez case, he couldn't very well forget the fact that he was a cop being paid to enforce law twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

  When he saw the automobile parked at the curb near Grover Park, he gave it but a cursory glance. Were he an ordinary citizen out for a midafternoon promenade, the cursory glance would have sufficed. Because he was a law-enforcing cop, he took a second glance.

  The second glance told him that the car was a 1939 Plymouth sedan, gray, license number 42L-1731. It told him that the right rear fender had been smashed in, and it told him that there were two occupants on the back seat, both male, both young. Two young men sitting in the back seat of a car presupposed the absence of a driver. Why were these kids waiting in a car alongside Grover Park, and for whom?

  In that instant, Aníbal Hernandez left Carella's mind completely. Casually, he sauntered past the car. The occupants were no more than twenty-one years old. They watched Carella as he passed. They watched him very closely. Carella did not turn to look at the parked car again. He continued walking up the street, and then stepped into the tailor shop of Max Cohen.

  Max was a round-faced man with a fringe of white hair that clung to his balding pate like a halo. He looked up when Carella came in, and said, "Hallo, Stevie, what's new?"

  "What could be new?" Carella asked. He had already begun taking off his brown overcoat. Max eyed him curiously.

  "Some teller work, maybe. You want something sewed?" he asked.

  "No. I want to borrow a coat. How about that tan one on the rack? Will it fit me?"

  "You vant to borrow…?"

  "I'm in a hurry, Max. I'll bring it right back. I'm watching some people."

  There was urgency in Carella's voice. Max dropped his needle and went to the rack of clothing. "Dun't get it doity, please," he said. "It's already been pressed."

  "I won't," Carella promised. He took the coat from Max, shrugged into it, and then went outside again. The car was still up the street, standing at the curb alongside the park. The boys were still on the back seat. Carella took a position across the street from the car, standing so that the blind spot in the rear of the car hid him from view. Patiently, he watched.

  The third boy appeared some five minutes later. He walked out of the park at a brisk clip, heading directly for the car. Carella shoved himself off the lamppost instantly and began crossing the street. The third boy did not see him; he walked directly to the car, opened the door on the driver's side, and climbed in. An instant later, Carella threw open the door opposite him.

  "Hey, what…?" the driver said.

  Carella leaned into the car. His coat was open and his gun butt lay a few inches from his right hand. "Sit tight," he said.

  The boys in the back seat exchanged quick, frightened glances.

  "Listen, you got no right to…" the driver started.

  "Shut up," Carella said. "What were you doing in the park?"

  "Huh?"

  "The park. Who'd you meet there?"

  "Me? Nobody. I was walking."

  "Where'd you walk?"

  "Around."

  "Why?"

  "I felt like walking."

  "How come your pals here didn't go with you?"

  "They didn't feel like walking."

  "Why are you answering my questions?" Carella hurled.

  "What?"

  "Why are you answering me, goddamnit? How do you know I'm a cop?"

  "I… I figured…"

  "Were you expecting cop trouble?"

  "Me? No, I was just going for a wa—"

  "Empty your pockets!"

  "What for?"

  "Because I say so!" Carella shouted.

  "He's got us cold," one of the boys in the back seat said.

  "Shut up!" the driver snapped without turning his head.

  "I'm waiting," Carella said.

  The driver fished into his pockets slowly and cautiously. He placed a package of cigarettes on the seat of the car, and then quickly covered it with a comb, a wallet, and a key ring.

  "Hold it," Carella said. Gingerly, he shoved the package of cigarettes to one side with his forefinger. The cigarettes had been resting on, and covering, a small envelope. Carella picked up the envelope, opened it, spilled some white powder onto the palm of his hand, and then tasted it. The boys watched him silently.

  "Heroin," Carella said. "Where'd you get it?"

  The driver didn't answer.

  "You make the buy in the park?"

  "I found it," the driver said.

  "Come on! Where'd you buy it?"

  "I found it, I told you."

  "Mister, you're getting a possessions charge whether you found it or inherited it. You might be helping yourself if you told me who pushed this junk to you."

  "Leave us out of this," the boys in the back said. "We ain't got none of the junk on us. Search us, go ahead. Search us."

  "I'm booking the three of you for acting in concert. Now, who pushed it?"

  "I found it," the driver said.

  "Okay, smart guy," Carella agreed, "you found it. Have you got a license to drive this car?"

  "Sure I do."

  "Then start driving it."

  "Where to?"

  "Take a long guess," Carella answered. He slid onto the seat and slammed the door behind him.

  There was nothing Roger Havilland liked better than questioning suspects, especially when he could question them alone. Roger Havilland was probably the biggest bull in the 87th Precinct, and undoubtedly the meanest son of a bitch in the world. You couldn't really blame Havilland for his attitude about punks in general. Havilland had once tried to break up a street fight and had in turn had his arm broken in four places. Havilland had been a gentle cop up to that time, but a compound fracture that had to be rebroken and reset because it would not heal properly had not helped his disposition at all. He had come out of the hospital with a healed arm, and a somewhat curious philosophy. Never again would Havilland be caught unawares. Havilland would strike first and ask questions later.

  So there was nothing he enjoyed more than questioning suspects, especially when he could question them alone and unassisted. Unfortunately, Carella was with him in the interrogation room on that Wednesday afternoon, December 20th.

  The boy who'd been caught with the deck of heroin sat in a chair with his head high and his eyes defiant. The two boys who'd been in the back seat of the car were being questioned separately and respectively by Detectives Meyer and Willis outside. The objective of these related questioning sessions was to discover from whom these kids had made their buy. There was no fun in picking up a hop-head. He took a fall, and then the city bore the expense of a thirty-day cold turkey ride. The important man was the pusher. Had the detectives of the 87th wanted to pull in a hu
ndred addicts a day, all of whom would be holding one form or another of narcotics, they had only to walk the streets of their precinct. Unauthorized possession of any quantity of narcotics was a violation of the Public Health Law Section and a misdemeanor. The offender would undoubtedly pull a term on Bailey's Island—thirty days or more—and then come out ready to seek the drug again.

  On the other hand, the pusher was in a more vulnerable position. State law made the possession of certain quantities of narcotics a felony, and those quantities were:

  One-quarter ounce or more of one-percent compounds of heroin, morphine, or cocaine.

  Two ounces or more of other narcotics.

  And this possession was punishable by imprisonment of from one to ten years. Then, too, the possession of two or more ounces aggregate weight of compounds containing three percent or more of heroin, morphine or cocaine—or sixteen ounces or more of other narcotics—created, according to the law, an unrebuttable presumption of intent to sell.

  It was not a crime to be a drug addict, but things could be made tough for you if you possessed either drugs or instruments for using drugs, which possession was a crime.

  The boy who'd made his buy in Grover Park had been caught holding a sixteenth of H, which had probably cost him something like five bucks. He was small fry. The bulls of the 87th were interested in the man who'd sold the stuff to him.

  "What's your name?" Havilland asked the boy.

  "Ernest," the boy answered. He was tall and thin, with a shock of blond hair that hung onto his forehead dejectedly now.

  "Ernest what?"

  "Ernest Hemingway."

  Havilland looked at Carella and then turned back to the boy. "All right, champ," he said, "we'll try again. What's your name?"

  "Ernest Hemingway."

  "I got no time to waste with a wise punk!" Havilland shouted.

  "What's the matter with you?" the boy said. "You asked me what my name was, and I—"

  "If you don't want to be picking up your teeth in a minute, you'd better give me a straight answer. What's your name?"

  "Ernest Hemingway. Listen, what's with—"