Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 (11 page)

“I’m going to be tied up later,” Grossman said, “why don’t I just give this to you?”

“All right, sir,” Genero said, and picked up his pencil. He felt very much like a detective. Besides, he was grateful not to be outside on another miserable day like this one. “Shoot,” he said, and quickly added, “Sir.”

“It’s on those notes I received.”

“Yes, sir, what notes?”

“‘Deputy Mayor Scanlon goes next,’” Grossman quoted, “and ‘Look! A whole new,’ et cetera.”

“Yes, sir,” Genero said, not knowing what Grossman was talking about.

“The paper is Whiteside Bond, available at any stationery store in the city. The messages were clipped from national magazines and metropolitan dailies. The adhesive is rubber cement.”

“Yes, sir,” Genero said, writing frantically.

“Negative on latent prints. We got a whole mess of smeared stuff, but nothing we could run a make on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In short,” Grossman said, “you know what you can do with these notes.”

“What’s that, sir?” Genero asked.

“We only run the tests,” Grossman said.
“You
guys are supposed to come up with the answers.”

Genero beamed. He had been included in the phrase “You guys” and felt himself to be a part of the elite. “Well, thanks a lot,” he said, “we’ll get to work on it up here.”

“Right,” Grossman said. “You want these notes back?”

“No harm having them.”

“I’ll send them over,” Grossman said, and hung up.

Very interesting, Genero thought, replacing the receiver on its cradle. If he had owned a deerstalker hat, he would have put it on in that moment.

“Where’s the john?” one of the painters asked.

“Why?” Genero said.

“We have to paint it.”

“Try not to slop up the urinals,” Genero said.

“We’re Harvard men,” the painter said. “We never slop up the urinals.”

The other painter laughed.

The third note arrived at eleven o’clock that morning.

It was delivered by a high school dropout who walked directly past the muster desk and up to the squadroom where Patrolman Genero was evolving an elaborate mystery surrounding the rubber cement that had been used as an adhesive.

“What’s everybody on vacation?” the kid asked. He was seventeen years old, his face sprinkled with acne. He felt very much at home in a squadroom because he had once been a member of a street gang called The Terrible Ten, composed of eleven young men who had joined together to combat the Puerto Rican influx into their turf. The gang had disbanded just before Christmas, not because the Puerto Ricans had managed to demolish them, but only because seven of the eleven called The Terrible Ten had finally succumbed to an enemy common to Puerto Rican and white Anglo-Saxon alike: narcotics. Five of the seven were hooked, two were dead. Of the remaining three, one was in prison for a gun violation, another had got married because he’d knocked up a little Irish girl, and the last was carrying an envelope into a detective squadroom, and feeling comfortable enough there to make a quip to a uniformed cop.

“What do you want?” Genero asked.

“I was supposed to give this to the desk sergeant, but there’s nobody at the desk. You want to take it?”

“What is it?”

“Search me,” the kid said. “Guy stopped me on the street and give me five bucks to deliver it.”

“Sit down,” Genero said. He took the envelope from the kid and debated opening it, and then realized he had got his fingerprints all over it. He dropped it on the desk. In the toilet down the hall, the painters were singing. Genero was only supposed to answer the phone and take down messages. He looked at the envelope again, severely tempted. “I said sit down,” he told the kid.

“What for?”

“You’re going to wait here until one of the detectives gets back, that’s what for.”

“Up yours, fuzz,” the kid said, and turned to go.

Genero drew his service revolver. “Hey,” he said, and the boy glanced over his shoulder into the somewhat large bore of
a
.38 Police Special.

“I’m hip to Miranda-Escobedo,” the kid said, but he sat down nonetheless.

“Good, that makes two of us,” Genero said.

Cops don’t like other cops to get it. It makes them nervous. It makes them feel they are in a profession that is not precisely white collar, despite the paperwork involved. It makes them feel that at any moment someone might hit them or kick them or even shoot them.

It makes them feel unloved.

The two young sportsmen who had unloved Carella so magnificently had broken three of his ribs and his nose. They had also given him such a headache, due to concussion caused by a few well-placed kicks to the medulla oblongata. He had gained consciousness shortly after being admitted to the hospital and he was conscious now, of course, but he didn’t look good, and he didn’t feel good, and he didn’t feel much like talking. So he sat with Teddy beside the bed, holding her hand and breathing shallowly because the broken ribs hurt like hell. The detectives did most of the talking, but there was a cheerlessness in their banter. They were suddenly face to face with violence of a most personal sort, not the violence they dealt with every working day of their lives, not an emotionless confrontation with broken mutilated strangers, but instead a glimpse at a friend and colleague who lay in battered pain on a
hospital bed while his wife held his hand and tried to smile at their feeble jokes.

The four detectives left the hospital room at twelve noon. Brown and Willis walked ahead of Hawes and Kling, who trailed behind them silently.

“Man, they got him good,” Brown said.

The seventeen year old dropout was beginning to scream Miranda-Escobedo, quoting rights like a lawyer. Genero kept telling him to shut up, but he had never really understood the Supreme Court decision too well, despite the flyers issued to every cop in the precinct, and he was afraid now that the kid knew something he didn’t know. He was overjoyed to hear the ring of footsteps on the recently painted iron-runged steps leading to the squadroom. Willis and Brown came into view on the landing first. Kling and Hawes were behind them. Genero could have kissed them all.

“These the bulls?” the dropout asked, and Genero said, “Shut up.”

“What’s up?” Brown asked.

“Tell your friend here about Miranda-Escobedo,” the kid said.

“Who’re you?” Brown asked.

“He delivered an envelope,” Genero said.

“Here we go,” Hawes said.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Give me some advice on my rights,” the kid said.

“Tell me your name, or I’ll kick your ass in,” Brown said. “How do you like
that
advice?” He had just witnessed what a pair of young hoods had done to Carella, and he was in no mood to take nonsense from a snotnose.

“My name is Michael McFadden, and I won’t answer no questions without a lawyer here,” the kid said.

“Can you afford a lawyer?” Brown asked.

“No.”

“Get him a lawyer, Hal,” Brown said, bluffing.

“Hey, wait a minute, what is this?” McFadden asked.

“You want a lawyer, we’ll get you a lawyer,” Brown said.

“What do I need a lawyer for? All I done was deliver an envelope.”

“I don’t know why you need a lawyer,” Brown said.
“You’re
the one who said you wanted one. Hal, call the D.A.’s office, get this suspect here a lawyer.”

“Suspect?” McFadden said.
“Suspect?
What the hell did I do?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Brown said, “and I can’t find out because you won’t let me ask any questions without a lawyer here. You getting him that lawyer, Hal?”

Willis, who had lifted the phone receiver and was listening to nothing more vital than a dial tone, said, “Tie-line’s busy, Art.”

“Okay, I guess we’ll just have to wait then. Make yourself comfortable, kid, we’ll get a lawyer up here for you soon as we can.”

“Look, what the hell,” McFadden said, “I don’t need no lawyer.”

“You said you wanted one.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, like if this is nothing serious …”

“We just wanted to ask you some questions about that envelope, that’s all.”

“Why? What’s in it?”

“Let’s open the envelope and show the kid what’s in it, shall we do that?” Brown said.

“All I done was deliver it,” McFadden said.

“Well, let’s see what’s inside it, shall we?” Brown said. He folded his handkerchief over the envelope, slit it open with a letter opener, and then used a tweezer to yank out the folded note.

“Here, use these,” Kling said, and took a pair of white cotton gloves from the top drawer of his desk. Brown put on the gloves, held his hands widespread alongside his face, and grinned.

“Whuffo does a chicken cross de road, Mistuh Bones?” he said, and burst out laughing. The other cops all laughed with him. Encouraged, McFadden laughed too. Brown glowered at him, and the laugh died in his throat. Gingerly, Brown unfolded the note and spread it flat on the desk top:

“What’s that supposed to mean?” McFadden asked.

“You tell us,” Brown said.

“Beats me.”

“Who gave you this note?”

“A tall blond guy wearing a hearing aid.”

“You know him?”

“Never saw him before in my life.”

“He just came up to you and handed you the envelope, huh?”

“No, he came up and offered me a fin to take it in here.”

“Why’d you accept?”

“Is there something wrong with bringing a note in a police station?”

“Only if it’s an extortion note,” Brown said.

“What’s extortion?” McFadden asked.

“You belong to The Terrible Ten, don’t you?” Kling asked suddenly.

“The club broke up,” McFadden said.

“But you
used
to belong.”

“Yeah, how do you know?” McFadden asked, a trace of pride in his voice.

“We know every punk in this precinct,” Willis said.

“You finished with him, Artie?”

“I’m finished with him.”

“Good-by, McFadden.”

“What’s extortion?” McFadden asked again.

“Good-by,” Willis said again.

The detective assigned to tailing Anthony La Bresca was Meyer Meyer. He was picked for the job because detectives aren’t supposed to be bald, and it was reasoned that La Bresca, already gun shy, would never tip to him. It was further reasoned that if La Bresca was really involved in a contemplated caper, it might be best not to follow him from his job to wherever he was going, but instead to be waiting for him there when he arrived. This presented the problem of second-guessing where he might be going, but it was recalled by one or another of the detectives that La Bresca had mentioned frequenting a pool hall on South Leary, and so this was where Meyer stationed himself at four o’clock that afternoon.

He was wearing baggy corduroy trousers, a brown leather jacket, and a brown watch cap. He looked like a longshoreman or something. Actually, he didn’t know what he looked like, he just hoped he didn’t look like a
cop. He had
a
matchstick in his mouth. He figured that was a nice touch, the matchstick. Also, because criminal types have an uncanny way of knowing when somebody is heeled, he was not carrying a gun. The only weapon on his person was a longshoreman’s hook tucked into the waistband of his trousers. If anyone asked him about the hook, he would say he needed it on the job, thereby establishing his line of work at the same time. He hoped he would not have to use the hook.

He wandered into the pool hall, which was on the second floor of
a
dingy brick building, said “Hi,” to the man sitting behind the entrance booth, and then said, “You got any open tables?”

“Pool or billiards?” the man said. He was chewing on a matchstick, too.

“Pool,” Meyer said.

“Take Number Four,” the man said, and turned to switch on the table lights from the panel behind him. “You new around here?” he asked, his back to Meyer.

“Yeah, I’m new around here,” Meyer said.

“We don’t dig hustlers,” the man said.

“I’m no hustler,” Meyer answered.

“Just make sure you ain’t.”

Meyer shrugged and walked over to the lighted table. There were seven other men in the pool hall, all of them congregated around a table near the windows, where four of them were playing and the other three were kibitzing. Meyer unobtrusively took a cue from the rack, set up the balls, and began shooting. He was a lousy player. He kept mentally calling shots and missing. Every now and then he glanced at the door. He was playing for perhaps ten minutes when one of the men from the other table sauntered over.

“Hi,” the man said. He was a burly man wearing a sports jacket over a woolen sports shirt. Tufts of black hair showed above the open throat of the shirt. His eyes were a deep brown, and he wore a black mustache that seemed to have leaped from his chest onto the space below his nose. The hair on his head was black too. He looked tough and he looked menacing, and Meyer immediately made him for the local cheese.

“You play here before?” the man asked.

“Nope,” Meyer said without looking up from the table.

“I’m Tino.”

“Hello, Tino,” Meyer said, and shot.