Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 (6 page)

“Have a drink!” one of the boys shouted, and Carella saw a match flare into life, and suddenly he was in flames.

His reaction sequence was curious in that his sense of smell supplied the first signal, the unmistakable aroma of gasoline fumes rising from the front of his coat, and then the flaring match, shocking in itself, providing a brilliant tiny explosion of light in the nearly black alley, more shocking in combination with the smell of the gasoline. Warning slammed with physical force into his temples, streaked in a jagged electric path to the back of his skull, and suddenly there were flames. There was no shock coupled with the fire that leaped up toward his face from the front of his coat. There was only terror.

Steve Carella reacted in much the same way Cro-Magnon must have reacted the first time he ventured too close to a raging fire and discovered that flames can cook people as well as saber-toothed tigers. He dropped his weapon, he covered his face, he whirled abruptly, instinctively rushing for the soot-crusted snowbank across the alley, forgetting his attackers, only vaguely aware that they were running, laughing, out of the alley and into the night, thinking only in a jagged broken pattern fire run burn fire out fire fire and hurling himself full length onto the snow. His hands were cupped tightly to his face, he could feel the flames chewing angrily at the backs of them, could smell the terrifying stench of burning hair and flesh, and then heard the sizzle of fire in contact with the snow, felt the cold and comforting snow, was suddenly enveloped in a white cloud of steam that rose from the beautiful snow, rolled from shoulder to shoulder in the glorious marvelous soothing
beneficial white and magnificent snow, and found tears in his eyes, and thought nothing, and lay with his face pressed to the snow for a long while, breathing heavily, and still thinking nothing.

He got up at last and painfully retrieved his discarded revolver and walked slowly to the mouth of the alley and looked at his hands in the light of the street lamp. He caught his breath, and then went to the call box on the next corner. He told Sergeant Murchison at the desk that the fire bugs had hit, and that his hands had been burned and he would need a meat wagon to get him over to the hospital. Murchison said, “Are you all right?” and Carella looked at his hands again, and said, “Yes, I’m all right, Dave.”

Detective Bert Kling was in love, but nobody else was.

The mayor was not in love, he was furious. The mayor called the police commissioner in high dudgeon and wanted to know what kind of a goddam city this was where a man of the caliber of Parks Commissioner Cowper could be gunned down on the steps of Philharmonic Hall, what the hell kind of a city was this, anyway?

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Perhaps you can tell me why adequate police protection was not provided for Commissioner Cowper when his wife informs me this morning that the police
knew
a threat had been made on his life, perhaps you can tell me that,” the mayor shouted into the phone.

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Or perhaps you can tell me why you still haven’t located the apartment from which those shots were fired, when the autopsy has already revealed the angle of entrance and your ballistics people have come up with
a
probable trajectory, perhaps you can tell me that.”

“Well, sir,” the police commissioner started, but the mayor said, “Get me some results, do you want this city to become a laughingstock?”

The police commissioner certainly didn’t want the city to become a laughingstock, so he said, “Yes, sir, I’ll do the best I can,” and the mayor said, “You had better,” and hung up.

There was no love lost between the mayor and the police commissioner that morning. So the police commissioner asked his secretary,
a
tall wan blond man who appeared consumptive and who claimed his constant hacking cough was caused by smoking three packs of cigarettes
a
day in a job that was enough to drive anyone utterly mad, the police commissioner asked his secretary to find out what the mayor had meant by a threat on the parks commissioner’s
life, and report back to him immediately. The tall wan blond secretary got to work at once, asking around here and there, and discovering that the 87th Precinct had indeed logged several telephone calls from a mysterious stranger who had threatened to kill the parks commissioner unless
five
thousand dollars was delivered to him by noon yesterday. When the police commissioner received this information, he said, “Oh,
yeah?”
and immediately dialed Frederick 7-8024, and asked to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes.

Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes had enough headaches that morning, what with Carella in the hospital with second-degree burns on the backs of both hands, and the painters having moved from the squadroom into his own private office, where they were slopping up everything in sight and telling jokes on their ladders. Byrnes was not overly fond of the police commissioner to begin with, the commissioner being a fellow who had been imported from a neighboring city when the new administration took over, a city which, in Byrnes’ opinion had an even larger crime rate than this one. Nor was the new commissioner terribly fond of Lieutenant Byrnes, because Byrnes was the sort of garrulous Irishman who shot off his mouth at Police Benevolent Association and Emerald Society functions, letting anyone within earshot know what he thought of the mayor’s recent whiz-kid appointee. So there was hardly any sweetness and light oozing over the telephone wires that morning between the commissioner’s office at Headquarters downtown on High Street, and Byrnes’ paint-spattered corner office on the second floor of the grimy station house on Grover Avenue.

“What’s this all about, Byrnes?” the commissioner asked.

“Well, sir,” Byrnes said, remembering that the
former
commissioner used to call him Pete, “we received several threatening telephone calls from an unidentified man yesterday, which telephone calls I discussed personally with Parks Commissioner Cowper.”

What did you do about those calls, Byrnes?”

“We placed the drop site under surveillance, and apprehended the man who made the pickup.”

“So what happened?”

“We questioned him and released him.”

“Why?”

“Insufficient evidence. He was also interrogated after the parks commissioner’s murder last night. We did not
have ample grounds for an arrest. The man is still free, but a telephone tap went into effect this morning, and we’re ready to move in if we monitor anything incriminating.”

“Why wasn’t the commissioner given police protection?”

“I offered it, sir, and it was refused.”

“Why wasn’t your suspect put under surveillance
before
a crime was committed?”

“I couldn’t spare any men, sir, and when I contacted the 115th in Riverhead, where the suspect resides, I was told they could not spare any men either. Besides, as I told you, the commissioner did not
want
protection. He felt we were dealing with a crackpot, sir, and I must tell you that was our opinion here, too. Until, of course, recent events proved otherwise.”

“Why hasn’t that apartment been found yet?”

“What apartment, sir?”

“The apartment from which the two shots were fired that killed Parks Commissioner Cowper.”

“Sir, the crime was not committed in our precinct. Philharmonic Hall, sir, is in the 53rd Precinct and, as I’m sure the commissioner realizes, a homicide is investigated by the detectives assigned to the squad in the precinct in which the homicide was committed.”

“Don’t give me any of that bullshit, Byrnes,” the police commissioner said.

“That is the way we do it in this city, sir,” Byrnes said.

“This is your case,” the commissioner answered. “You got that, Byrnes?”

“If you say so, sir.”

“I say so. Get some men over to the area, and find that goddamn apartment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And report back to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Byrnes said, and hung up.

“Getting a little static, huh?” the first painter said.

“Getting your ass chewed out, huh?” the second painter said.

Both men were on their ladders, grinning and dripping apple green paint on the floor.

“Get the hell out of this office!” Byrnes shouted.

“We ain’t finished yet,” the first painter said.

“We don’t leave till we finish,” the second painter said.

“That’s our orders,” the first painter said.

“We don’t work for the Police Department, you know.”

“We work for the Department of Public Works.”

“Maintenance and Repair.”

“And we don’t quit a job till we finish it.”

“Stop dripping paint all over my goddamn floor!” Byrnes shouted, and stormed out of the office. “Hawes!” he shouted “Kling! Willis! Brown! Where the hell
is
everybody?” he shouted.

Meyer came out of the men’s room, zipping up his fly.

“What’s up, Skipper?” he said.

“Where were you?”

“Taking a leak. Why, what’s up?”

“Get somebody over to the area!” Byrnes shouted.

“What area?”

“Where the goddamn commissioner got shot!”

“Okay, sure,” Meyer said. “But why? That’s not our case.”

“It is now.”

“Oh?”

“Who’s catching?”

“I am.”

“Where’s Kling?”

“Day off.”

“Where’s Brown?”

“On that wire tap.”

“And Willis?”

“He went to the hospital to see Steve.”

“And Hawes?”

“He went down for some Danish.”

“What the hell am I running here, a resort in the mountains?”

“No, sir. We …”

“Send Hawes over there! Send him over the minute he gets back. Get on the phone to Ballistics. Find out what they’ve got. Call the M.E.’s office and get that autopsy report. Get cracking, Meyer!”

“Yes,
sir!”
Meyer snapped, and went immediately to the telephone.

“This goddamn racket drives me crazy,” Byrnes said, and started to storm back into his office, remembered that the jolly green painters were in there slopping around, and stormed into the Clerical Office instead.

“Get those files in order!” he shouted. “What the hell do you do in here all day, Miscolo, make coffee?”

“Sir?” Miscolo said, because that’s exactly what he was doing at the moment.

Bert Kling was in love.

It was not a good time of the year to be in love. It is better to be in love when flowers are blooming and balmy breezes are wafting in off the river, and strange animals come up to lick your hand. There’s only one good thing about being in love in March, and that’s that it’s better to be in love in March than not to be in love at all, as the wise man once remarked.

Bert Kling was madly in love.

He was madly in love with a girl who was twenty-three years old, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blond hair long and trailing midway down her back or sometimes curled into a honey conch shell at the back of her head, her eyes a cornflower blue, a tall girl who came just level with his chin when she was wearing heels. He was madly in love with a scholarly girl who was studying at night for her master’s degree in psychology while working during the day conducting interviews for a firm downtown on Shepherd Street; a serious girl who hoped to go on for her Ph.D., and then pass the state boards, and then practice psychology; a nutty girl who was capable of sending to the squadroom a six-foot high heart cut out of plywood and painted red and lettered in yellow with the words Cynthia Forrest Loves Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram Kling, So Is That A Crime?, as she had done on St. Valentine’s Day just last month (and which Kling had still not heard the end of from all his comical colleagues); an emotional girl who could burst into tears at the sight of a blind man playing an accordian on The Stem, to whom she gave a five-dollar bill, merely put the bill silently into the cup, soundlessly, it did not even make a rustle, and turned away to weep into Kling’s shoulder; a passionate girl who clung to him fiercely in the night and who woke him sometimes at six in the morning to say, “Hey, Cop, I have to go to work in a few hours, are you interested?” to which Kling invariably answered, “No, I am not interested in sex and things like that,” and then kissed her until she was dizzy and afterwards sat across from her at the kitchen table in her apartment, staring at her, marveling at her beauty and once caused her to blush when he said, “There’s a woman who sells
pidaguas
on Mason Avenue, her name is Iluminada, she was born in Puerta Rico. Your name should be Illuminada, Cindy. You fill the room with light.”

Boy, was he in love.

But, it being March, and the streets still banked high with February snow, and the winds howling, and the
wolves growling and chasing civilians in troikas who cracked whips and huddled in bear rugs, it being a bitter cold winter which seemed to have started in September and showed no signs of abating till next August, when possibly, but just possibly, all the snow might melt and the flowers would bloom—it being that kind of a treacherous winter, what better to do than discuss police work? What better to do than rush along the frozen street on Cindy’s lunch hour with her hand clutched tightly in the crook of his arm and the wind whipping around them and drowning out Kling’s voice as he tried to tell her of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Parks Commissioner Cowper.

“Yes, it
sounds
very mysterious,” Cindy said, and brought her hand out of her pocket in an attempt to keep the wind from tearing the kerchief from her head. “Listen, Bert,” she said, “I’m really very tired of winter, aren’t you tired of it?”

“Yeah,” Kling said. “Listen, Cindy, you know who
I
hope this isn’t?”

“Hope who isn’t?” she said.

“The guy who made the calls. The guy who killed the commissioner. You know who I hope we’re not up against?”

“Who?” she asked.

“The deaf man,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“He was a guy we went up against a few years back, it must have been maybe seven, eight years ago. He tore this whole damn city apart trying to rob a bank. He was the smartest crook we ever came up against.”