by Fuzz
“What’s that?” he said suddenly.
“What’s what?” Phillips asked.
“Up ahead. Those two guys.”
“Huh?” Phillips said.
“They’re trying doors,” Genero said. “Pull over.”
“Huh?”
“Pull over and cut your engine!”
He could hear them talking on the sidewalk outside, he could hear their voices coming closer and closer. He lay in the hallway with his shoulder oozing blood, knowing he had to climb those steps and get to the roof, get from this building to the next one, jump rooftops all night long if he had to, but first rest, just rest, just rest a little, rest before they opened the door and found him, how had they got to him so fast? Were there policemen all over this damn city?
There were too many things he did not understand.
He listened as the voices came closer, and then he saw the doorknob turning.
“Hold it right there!” Genero shouted.
The boys turned immediately.
“Fuzz!” Baby shouted, and dropped the gasoline can, and began running. Genero fired a warning shot over his head, and then belatedly yelled, “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!” and then fired another warning shot. Up the street, where he had parked the RMP at the curb, Phillips was opening the door on the driver’s side and unholstering his revolver. Genero fired again, surprised when he saw the running boy drop to the snow. I got him! he thought, and then whirled to see the second boy running in the opposite direction, Holy Jesus, he thought, I’m busting up a robbery or something! “Halt!” he shouted. “Stop!” and fired into the air, and saw the boy rounding the corner, and immediately ran after him.
He chased Jimmy for three blocks in the snow, pushing through knee-deep drifts, slipping on icy patches, the wind a constant adversary, and finally caught up with him as he was scaling a back-alley fence.
“Hold it right there, Sonny,” Genero said, “or I’ll put one right up your ass.”
Jimmy hesitated astride the fence, debating whether to swing his legs up and over it, or to get down before this trigger-happy bastard really carried out his threat.
Sighing, he dropped to the ground at Genero’s feet.
“What seems to be the trouble, Officer?” he asked.
“Trouble is right,” Genero said. “Get your hands up.”
Phillips came puffing into the alley just then. He walked up to Genero like the hair bag he was, shoved him aside, and then pushed Jimmy against the fence while he frisked him. Genero was smart enough to make certain his handcuffs were the ones they put on the kid, though there was a moment there when it seemed like a touch-and-go race with Phillips.
By the time they got the kid back to the squad car, by the time they went up the street to ascertain that the other kid was still alive, though barely, by the time they located the hallway door the kids were about to open, by the time they opened that door themselves and flashed their lights into the foyer, all they saw was a puddle of blood on the floor.
The blood continued up the steps.
They followed the spatters to the top floor, directly to the open door of the roof. Genero stepped outside and threw the beam of his flash across the snow.
Bloodstains and footprints led in an erratic trail to the edge of the roof, and from there to the roof beyond, and from there to the rest of the city, or perhaps the rest of the world.
Two blocks away, they found Steve Carella wandering coatless in the snow like Dr. Zhivago or somebody.
14
The cleanup in the tailor shop was a gruesome job.
La Bresca and Calucci were both dead. The big redheaded man named Buck was also dead. Ahmad was alive and breathing when they carted him off in the meat wagon, but he had taken two slugs in the chest from Calucci’s .45, and another in the stomach from La Bresca’s Walther. He was gushing blood, and spitting blood, and shivering and mumbling, and they doubted very much if he’d make it to the hospital alive.
Carella was shivering a little himself.
He stood near the radiator in the tailor shop, wrapped in his overcoat, his teeth chattering, and asked John the Tailor how much money there was in the metal box he was taking home.
“Due cento tre dollari.” John the Tailor said.
Two hundred and three dollars.
Ahmad knew the deaf man’s name.
“Orecchio,” he said, and the nurse wiped blood from his lips. “Mort Orecchio.”
“That’s not his real name,” Willis told him. “Do you know him by any other name?”
“Orecchio,” Ahmad repeated. “Mort Orecchio.”
“Is there anyone who might know his real name?”
“Orecchio,” Ahmad repeated.
“Was there anyone else in this with you?”
“The girl,” Ahmad said.
“What girl?”
“Rochelle,” he said.
“Rochelle what?”
Ahmad shook his head.
“Where can we find her?”
“Three … three … eight … Ha … Ha … Ha …” he said, and died.
He had not died laughing.
He was trying to say 338 Harborside.
They found in Buck’s pants pocket a letter addressed to him at 338 Harborside Oval. His full name was Andrew Buckley, and the letter was addressed to him c/o Mr. Mort Orecchio. Carella and Willis hit the apartment and found a pretty brunette girl in lounging pajamas, sitting at the piano playing “Heart and Soul.” They waited while she got dressed and then took her to the squadroom, where they questioned her for a half-hour in the presence of a lawyer. The girl told them her name was Rochelle Newell and that she had known the deaf man for only a short time, two or three months. She insisted his name was Mort Orecchio.
“That’s not his name,” Carella said.
“Yes, that’s his name.”
“What’d you call him?”
“Mort,” the girl said.
“What’d you call him in bed?” Willis asked suddenly, hoping to surprise her.
“Sweetie,” the girl answered.
Jimmy could not stop giggling.
They had just told him that his friend Baby was dead, and yet he could not stop giggling.
“You know the kind of trouble you’re in, son?” Meyer asked.
“No, what kind?” Jimmy said, and giggled.
“We’re going to book you for homicide.”
“It won’t stick,” Jimmy said, and giggled.
“It’ll stick, son,” Meyer said. “We got a dying confession from your pal, and it was taken in the presence of a lawyer, and we’ve got a cop outside who you tried to kill and who’ll make a positive identification of both of you. It’ll stick, believe me.”
“Naw, it won’t stick,” Jimmy said, and kept giggling.
Meyer figured he was crazy.
Meyer figured Rollie Chabrier was crazy too.
He called at close to midnight.
“This is kind of late, isn’t it?” Meyer said. “I was just about to head home.”
“Well, I’m still working here at the goddamn office,” Chabrier said. “You guys have it easy.”
“Well, what is it?” Meyer said.
“About this book,” Chabrier said. “Yeah?”
“You want my advice?”
“Sure, I want your advice. Why do you think I contacted you?”
“My advice is forget it.”
“That’s some advice.”
“Has Steve Carella ever had a book named after him?”
“No, but …”
“Has Bert Kling?”
“No.”
“Or Cotton Hawes? Or Hal Willis? Or Arthur Brown? Or …”
“Look, Rollie …”
“You should be flattered,” Chabrier said. “Even I have never had a book named after me.”
“Yeah, but …”
“You know how many people go their entire lives and never have books named after them?”
“How many?”
“I should?”
“Sure. Somebody named a book after you! You’re famous!”
“I am?”
“Absolutely. From now to the very end of time, people will be able to go into libraries all over the world and see your name on a book, Meyer, think of it. On a book. Meyer Meyer,” he said grandly, and Meyer could almost visualize him spreading his hands as though conjuring marquee lights. “God, Meyer, you should be thrilled to death.”
“Yeah?” Meyer said.
“I envy you, Meyer. I truly and honestly envy you.”
“Gee,” Meyer said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Rollie. Really. Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” Chabrier said, and hung up.
Meyer went into the men’s room to look at himself in the mirror.
Andy Parker brought the morning papers into the squadroom at 2:00 A.M.
“You want to read how smart we are?” he said, and dropped the papers on Kling’s desk.
Kling glanced at the headlines.
“Sure,” Parker said, “we busted the whole thing wide open. Nobody can lick this team, pal.” Kling nodded, preoccupied.
“Everybody can rest easy now,” Parker said. “The papers tell all about the scheme, and how the ring is busted, and how none of those hundred marks have to worry anymore. And all because of the brilliant bulls of the 87th.” He paused and then said, “I bet Genero gets a promotion out of this. His name’s all over the paper.”
Kling nodded and said nothing.
He was pondering the latest development in the Great Squadroom Mystery. The stolen electric fan, it seemed, had turned up in a hockshop downtown. There had been an apple green fingerprint on its base.
“Now who do you suppose …” he started, but Parker had already stretched out in the swivel chair behind his desk, with one of the newspapers over his face.
