by Ed McBain
David Foster was one of those people. David Foster was a Negro.
He had been born in the precinct territory, and he had grown up there, and when he'd turned 21, being of sound mind and body, being four inches over the minimum requirement of five feet eight inches, having 20/20 vision without glasses, and not having any criminal record, he had taken the competitive Civil Service examination and had been appointed a patrolman.
The starting salary at the time had been $3,725 per annum, and Foster had earned his salary well. He had earned it so well that in the space of five years he had been appointed to the Detective Division. He was now a 3rd Grade Detective, and his salary was now $5,230 per annum, and he still earned it.
At one a.m., on the morning of July 24th, while a colleague named Mike Reardon lay spilling his blood into the gutter, David Foster was earning his salary by interrogating the man he and Bush had picked up in the bar knifing.
The interrogation was being conducted on the second floor of the precinct house. To the right of the desk on the first floor, there was an inconspicuous and dirty white sign with black letters which announced DETECTIVE DIVISION, and a pointing hand advised any visitor that the bulls hung out upstairs.
The stairs were metal, and narrow, but scrupulously clean. They went up for a total of sixteen risers, then turned back on themselves and continued on up for another sixteen risers, and there you were.
Where you were was a narrow, dimly-lighted corridor. There were two doors on the right of the open stairway, and a sign labeled them LOCKERS. If you turned left and walked down the corridor, you passed a wooden slatted bench on your left, a bench without a back on your right (set into a narrow alcove before the sealed doors of what had once been an elevator shaft), a door on your right marked MEN'S LAVATORY, and a door on your left over which a small sign hung, and the sign simply read CLERICAL.
At the end of the corridor was the Detective Squad Room.
You saw first a slatted rail divider. Beyond that, you saw desks and telephones, and a bulletin board with various photographs and notices on it, and a hanging light globe and beyond that more desks and the grilled windows that opened on the front of the building. You couldn't see very much that went on beyond the railing on your right because two huge metal filing cabinets blocked the desks on that side of the room. It was on that side of the room that Foster was interrogating the man he'd picked up in the bar earlier that night.
"What's your name?" he asked the man.
"No hablo ingles," the man said.
"Oh, hell," Foster said. He was a burly man with a deep chocolate coloring and warm brown eyes. He wore a white dress shirt, open at the throat. His sleeves were rolled up over muscular forearms.
"Cual es su nombre?" he asked in hesitant Spanish.
"Tomas Perillo."
"Your address?" He paused, thinking, "Direccion?"
"Tres-tres-cuatro Mei-son."
"Age? Edad?"
Perillo shrugged.
"All right," Foster said, "where's the knife? Oh, crap, we'll never get anywhere tonight. Look, donde esta el cuchillo? Puede usted decirme?"
"Creo que no."
"Why not? For Christ's sake, you had a knife, didn't you?"
"No se."
"Look, you son of a bitch, you know damn well you had a knife. A dozen people saw you with it. Now how about it?"
Perillo was silent.
"Tiene usted un cuchillo?" Foster asked.
"No."
"You're a liar!" Foster said. "You do have a knife. What'd you do with it after you slashed that guy in the bar?"
"Donde esta el servicio?" Perillo asked.
"Never mind where the hell the men's room is," Foster snapped. "Stand up straight, for Christ's sake. What the hell do you think this is, the pool room? Take your hands out of your pockets."
Perillo took his hands from his pockets.
"Now where's the knife?"
"No se."
"You don't know, you don't know," Foster mimicked. "All right, get the hell out of here. Sit down on the bench outside. I'm gonna get a cop in here who really speaks your language, pal. Now go sit down. Go ahead."
"Bien," Perillo said. "Donde esta el servicio?"
"Down the hall on your left And don't take all night in there."
Perillo went out. Foster grimaced. The man he'd cut hadn't been cut bad at all. If they knocked themselves out over every goddamn knifing they got, they'd be busy running down nothing but knifings. He wondered what it would be like to be stationed in a precinct where carving was something you did to a turkey. He grinned at his own humor, wheeled a typewriter over, and began typing up a report on the burglary they'd had several days back.
When Carella and Bush came in, they seemed in a big hurry. Carella walked directly to the phone, consulted a list of phone numbers beside it, and began dialing.
"What's up?" Foster said.
"That homicide," Carella answered.
"Yeah?"
"It was Mike."
"What do you mean? Huh?"
"Mike Reardon."
"What?" Foster said. "What?"
"Two slugs at the back of his head. I'm calling the Lieutenant. He's gonna want to move fast on this one."
"Hey, is he kidding?" Foster said to Bush, and then he saw the look on Bush's face, and he knew this was not a joke.
Lieutenant Byrnes was the man in charge of the 87th Detective Squad. He had a small, compact body and a head like a rivet. His eyes were blue and tiny, but those eyes had seen a hell of a lot, and they didn't miss very much that went on around the lieutenant. The lieutenant knew his precinct was a trouble spot, and that was the way he liked it. It was the bad neighborhoods that needed policemen, he was fond of saying, and he was proud to be a part of a squad that really earned its keep. There had once been sixteen men in his squad, and now there were fifteen.
Ten of those fifteen were gathered around him in the squad room, the remaining five being out on plants from which they could not be yanked. The men sat in their chairs, or on the edges of desks, or they stood near the grilled windows, or they leaned against filing cabinets. The squad room looked the way it might look at any of the times when the new shift was coming in to relieve the old one, except that there were no dirty jokes now. The men all knew that Mike Reardon was dead.
Acting Lieutenant Lynch stood alongside Byrnes while Byrnes filled his pipe. Byrnes had thick capable fingers, and he wadded the tobacco with his thumb, not looking up at the men.
Carella watched him. Carella admired and respected the lieutenant, even though many of the other men called him "an old turd." Carella knew cops who worked in precincts where the old man wielded a whip instead of a cerebellum. It wasn't good to work for a tyrant. Byrnes was all right, and Byrnes was also a good cop and a smart cop, and so Carella gave him his undivided attention, even though the lieutenant had not yet begun speaking.
Byrnes struck a wooden match and lighted his pipe. He gave the appearance of an unhurried man about to take his port after a heavy meal, but the wheels were grinding furiously inside his compact skull, and every fibre in his body was outraged at the death of one of his best men.
"No pep talk," he said suddenly. "Just go out and find the bastard." He blew out a cloud of smoke and then waved it away with one of his short, wide hands. "If you read the newspapers, and if you start believing them, you'll know that cops hate cop killers. That's the law of the jungle. That's the law of survival. The newspapers are full of crap if they think any revenge motive is attached. We can't let a cop be killed because a cop is a symbol of law and order. If you take away the symbol, you get animals in the streets. We've got enough animals in the streets now.
"So I want you to find Reardon's killer, but not because Reardon was a cop assigned to this precinct, and not even because Reardon was a good cop. I want you to find that bastard because Reardon was a man—and a damned fine man.
"Handle it however you want to, you know your jobs. Give me progress reports on whatev
er you get from the files, and whatever you get in the streets. But find him. That's all."
The lieutenant went back into his office with Lynch, and some of the cops went to the modus operandi file and began digging for information on thugs who used .45's. Some of the cops went to the Lousy File, the file of known criminals in the precinct, and they began searching for any cheap thieves who may have crossed Mike Reardon's path at one time or another. Some of the cops went to the Convictions file and began a methodical search of cards listing every conviction for which the precinct had been responsible, with a special eye out for cases on which Mike Reardon had worked. Foster went out into the corridor and told the suspect he'd questioned to get the hell home and to keep his nose clean. The rest of the cops took to the streets, and Carella and Bush were among them.
"He gripes my ass," Bush said. "He thinks he's Napoleon."
"He's a good man," Carella said.
"Well, he seems to think so, anyway."
"Everything gripes you," Carella said. "You're maladjusted."
"I'll tell you one thing," Bush said. "I'm getting an ulcer in this goddamn precinct. I never had trouble before, but since I got assigned to this precinct, I'm getting an ulcer. Now how do you account for that?"
There were a good many possible ways to account for Bush's ulcer and none of them had anything whatever to do with the precinct. But Carella didn't feel like arguing at the moment, and so he kept his peace. Bush simply nodded sourly.
"I want to call my wife," he said.
"At two in the morning?" Carella asked incredulously.
"What's the matter with that?" Bush wanted to know. He was suddenly antagonistic.
"Nothing. Go ahead, call her."
"I just want to check," Bush said, and then he said, "Check in."
"Sure."
"Hell, we may be going for days on this one."
"Sure."
"Anything wrong with calling her to let her know what's up?"
"Listen, are you looking for an argument?" Carella asked, smiling.
"No."
"Then go call your wife, and get the hell off my back."
Bush nodded emphatically. They stopped outside an open candy store on Culver, and Bush went in to make his call. Carella stood outside, his back to the open counter at the store's front.
The city was very quiet. The tenements stretched grimy fingers toward the soft muzzle of the sky. Occasionally, a bathroom light winked like an opening eye in an otherwise blinded face. Two young Irish girls walked past the candy store, their high heels clattering on the pavement. He glanced momentarily at their legs and the thin summer frocks they wore. One of the girls winked unashamedly at him, and then both girls began giggling, and for no good reason he remembered something about lifting the skirts of an Irish lass, and the thought came to him full-blown so that he knew it was stored somewhere in his memory, and it seemed to him he had read it. Irish lasses, Ulysses? Christ, that had been one hell of a book to get through, pretty little lasses and all. I wonder what Bush reads? Bush is too busy to read. Bush is too busy worrying about his wife, Jesus, does that man worry.
He glanced over his shoulder. Bush was still in the booth, talking rapidly. The man behind the counter leaned over a racing form, a toothpick angling up out of his mouth. A young kid sat at the end of the counter drinking an egg cream. Carella sucked in a breath of fetid air. The door to the phone booth opened, and Bush stepped out, mopping his brow. He nodded at the counterman, and then went out to join Carella.
"Hot as hell in that booth," he said.
"Everything okay?" Carella asked.
"Sure," Bush said. He looked at Carella suspiciously. "Why shouldn't it be?"
"No reason. Any ideas where we should start?"
"This isn't going to be such a cinch," Bush said. "Any stupid son of a bitch with a grudge could've done it."
"Or anybody in the middle of committing a crime."
"We ought to leave it to Homicide. We're in over our heads."
"We haven't even started yet, and you say we're in over our heads. What the hell's wrong with you, Hank?"
"Nothing," Bush said, "only I don't happen to think of cops as masterminds, that's all."
"That's a nice thing for a cop to say."
"It's the truth. Look, this detective tag is a bunch of crap, and you know it as well as I do. All you need to be a detective is a strong pair of legs, and a stubborn streak. The legs take you around to all the various dumps you have to go to, and the stubborn streak keeps you from quitting. You follow each separate trail mechanically, and if you're lucky, one of the trails pays off. If you're not lucky, it doesn't. Period."
"And brains don't enter into it at all, huh?"
"Only a little. It doesn't take much brains to be a cop."
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Okay, I don't want to argue. If Reardon got it trying to stop somebody in the commission of a crime..."
"That's another thing that burns me up about cops," Bush said.
"You're a regular cop hater, aren't you?" Carella asked
"This whole goddamn city is full of cop haters. You think anybody respects a cop? Symbol of law and order, crap! The old man ought to get out there and face life. Anybody who ever got a parking tag is automatically a cop hater. That's the way it is."
"Well, it sure as hell shouldn't be that way," Carella said, somewhat angrily.
Bush shrugged. "What burns me up about cops is they don't speak English."
"What?"
"In the commission of a crime!" Bush mocked. "Cop talk. Did you ever hear a cop say 'We caught him?' No. He says, 'We apprehended him.'"
"I never heard a cop say 'We apprehended him,'" Carella said.
"I'm talking about for official publication," Bush said.
"Well, that's different. Everybody talks fancy when it's for official publication."
"Cops especially."
"Why don't you turn in your shield? Become a hackie or something?"
"I'm toying with the idea." Bush smiled suddenly. His entire tirade had been delivered in his normally hushed voice, and now that he was smiling, it was difficult to remember that he'd been angry at all.
"Anyway, I thought the bars," Carella said. "I mean, if this is a grudge kind of thing, it might've been somebody from the neighborhood. And we may be able to pick up something in the bars. Who the hell knows?"
"I can use a beer, anyway," Bush said. "I've been wanting a beer ever since I come on tonight."
The Shamrock was one of a million bars all over the world with the same name. It squatted on Culver Avenue between a pawn shop and a Chinese laundry. It was an all-night joint, and it catered to the Irish clientele that lined Culver. Occasionally, a Puerto Rican wandered into The Shamrock, but such offtrail excursions were discouraged by those among The Shamrock's customers who owned quick tempers and powerful fists. The cops stopped at the bar often, not to wet their whistles—because drinking on duty was strictly forbidden by the rules and regulations—but to make sure that too many quick tempers did not mix with too much whiskey or too many fists. The flareups within the gaily decorated walls of the bar were now few and far between, or—to be poetic— less frequent than they had been in the good old days when the neighborhood had first succumbed to the Puerto Rican assault wave. In those days, not speaking English too well, not reading signs too well, the Puerto Ricans stumbled into The Shamrock with remarkably ignorant rapidity. The staunch defenders of America for the Americans, casually ignoring the fact that Puerto Ricans were and are Americans, spent many a pugilistic evening proving their point. The bar was often brilliantly decorated with spilled blood. But that was in the good old days. In the bad new days, you could go into The Shamrock for a week running, and not see more than one or two broken heads.
There was a Ladies Invited sign in the window of the bar, but not many ladies accepted the invitation. The drinkers were, instead, neighborhood men who tired of the four walls of their dreary tenement flats, w
ho sought the carefree camaraderie of other men who had similarly grown weary of their own homes. Their wives were out playing Bingo on Tuesdays, or at the movies collecting a piece of china on Wednesdays, or across the street with the Sewing Club ("We so and so and so and so") on Thursdays, and so it went. So what was wrong with a friendly brew in a neighborhood tavern? Nothing.
Except when the cops showed.
Now there was something very disgusting about policemen in general, and bulls in particular. Sure, you could go through the motions of saying, "How are yuh, this evenin', Officer Dugan?" and all that sort of rot, and you could really and truly maybe hold a fond spot in the old ticker for the new rookie, but you still couldn't deny that a cop sitting next to you when you were halfway toward getting a snootful was a somewhat disconcerting thing and would likely bring on the goblins in the morning. Not that anyone had anything against cops. It was just that cops should not loiter around bars and spoil a man's earnest drinking. Nor should cops hang around book joints and spoil a man's earnest gambling. Nor should they hang around brothels and spoil a man's earnest endeavors to, cops simply shouldn't hang around, that was all.
And bulls, bulls were cops in disguise, only worse.
So what did those two big jerks at the end of the bar want?
"A beer, Harry," Bush said.
"Comin' up," Harry the bartender answered. He drew the beer and brought it over to where Bush and Carella were seated. "Good night for a beer, ain't it?" Harry said.
"I never knew a bartender who didn't give you a commercial when you ordered a beer on a hot night," Bush said quietly.
Harry laughed, but only because his customer was a cop. Two men at the shuffleboard table were arguing about an Irish free state. The late movie on television was about a Russian empress.
