Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22

by Fuzz

  The girl was waiting in a Buick.

  The car was black, Meyer made the year and make at once, but he could not read the license plate because the car was too far away, parked at the curb some two blocks up the street. The engine was running. The exhaust threw gray plumes of carbon monoxide into the gray and empty street. La Bresca stopped at the car, and Meyer ducked into the closest doorway, the windowed alcove of a pawnshop. Surrounded by saxophones and typewriters, cameras and tennis rackets, fishing rods and loving cups, Meyer looked diagonally through the joined and angled windows of the shop and squinted his eyes in an attempt to read the license plate of the Buick. He could not make out the numbers. The girl had blond hair, it fell loose to the base of her neck, she leaned over on the front seat to open the door for La Bresca.

  La Bresca got into the car and slammed the door behind him.

  Meyer came out of the doorway just as the big black Buick gunned away from the curb.

  He still could not read the license plate.

  7

  Nobody likes to work on Saturday.

  There’s something obscene about it, it goes against the human grain. Saturday is the day before the day of rest, a good time to stomp on all those pressures that have been building Monday to Friday. Given a nice blustery rotten March day with the promise of snow in the air and the city standing expectantly monolithic, stoic, and solemn, given such a peach of a Saturday, how nice to be able to start a cannel coal fire in the fireplace of your three-room apartment and smoke yourself out of the joint. Or, lacking a fireplace, what better way to utilize Saturday than by pouring yourself a stiff hooker of bourbon and curling up with a blonde or a book, spending your time with War and Peace or Whore and Piece, didn’t Shakespeare invent some of his best puns on Saturday, drunk with a wench in his first best bed?

  Saturday is a quiet day. It can drive you to distraction with its prospects of leisure time, it can force you to pick at the coverlet wondering what to do with all your sudden freedom, it can send you wandering through the rooms in search of occupation while moodily contemplating the knowledge that the loneliest night of the week is fast approaching.

  Nobody likes to work on Saturday because nobody else is working on Saturday. Except cops.

  Grind, grind, grind, work, work, work, driven by a sense of public-mindedness and dedication to humanity, law enforcement officers are forever at the ready, alert of mind, swift of body, noble of purpose.

  Andy Parker was asleep in the swivel chair behind his desk.

  “Where is everybody?” one of the painters said. “What?” Parker said. “Huh?” Parker said, and sat bolt upright, and glared at the painter and then washed his huge hand over his face and said, “What the hell’s the matter with you, scaring a man that way?”

  “We’re leaving,” the first painter said.

  “We’re finished,” the second painter said.

  “We already got all our gear loaded on the truck, and we wanted to say good-by to everybody.”

  “So where is everybody?”

  “There’s a meeting in the lieutenant’s office,” Parker said.

  “We’ll just pop in and say good-by,” the first painter said.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Parker said.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re discussing homicide. It’s not wise to pop in on people when they’re discussing homicide.”

  “Not even to say good-by?”

  “You can say good-by to me,” Parker said.

  “It wouldn’t be the same thing,” the first painter said.

  “So then hang around and say good-by when they come out. They should be finished before twelve. In fact, they got to be finished before twelve.”

  “Yeah, but we’re finished now,” the second painter said.

  “Can’t you find a few things you missed?” Parker suggested. “Like, for example, you didn’t paint the typewriters, or the bottle on the water cooler, or our guns. How come you missed our guns? You got green all over everything else in the goddamn place.”

  “You should be grateful,” the first painter said. “Some people won’t work on Saturday at all, even at time and a half.”

  So both painters left in high dudgeon, and Parker went back to sleep in the swivel chair behind his desk.

  “I don’t know what kind of a squad I’m running here,” Lieutenant Byrnes said, “when two experienced detectives can blow a surveillance, one by getting made first crack out of the box, and the other by losing his man; that’s a pretty good batting average for two experienced detectives.”

  “I was told the suspect didn’t have a car,” Meyer said. “I was told he had taken a train the night before.”

  “That’s right, he did,” Kling said.

  “I had no way of knowing a woman would be waiting for him in a car,” Meyer said.

  “So you lost him,” Byrnes said, “which might have been all right if the man had gone home last night. But O’Brien was stationed outside the La Bresca house in Riverhead, and the man never showed, which means we don’t know where he is today, now do we? We don’t know where a prime suspect is on the day the deputy mayor is supposed to get killed.”

  “No, sir,” Meyer said, “we don’t know where La Bresca is.”

  “Because you lost him.”

  “I guess so, sir.”

  “Well, how would you revise that statement, Meyer?”

  “I wouldn’t, sir. I lost him.”

  “Yes, very good, I’ll put you in for a commendation.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t get flip, Meyer.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “This isn’t a goddamn joke here, I don’t want Scanlon to wind up with two holes in his head the way Cowper did.”

  “No, sir, neither do I.”

  “Okay, then learn for Christ’s sake how to tail a person, will you?”

  “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.