Killer’s Choice (87th Precinct), page 9
“Then whose?” Susie, who was ten, asked.
“We are discussing the manners of the police department,” Meyer said. “And the best police department is the one which has hardly any manners at all.”
“Meyer,” Sarah warned. “The children.”
“We already separated children from cops,” Meyer said. “Would you pass me a roll, please? Besides, the children know that what’s said in this house is family stuff and doesn’t go beyond these four walls. Am I right, children?”
“Yes, Pop,” Jeff said.
Susie and Alan nodded as if Meyer had just entrusted them with the plans for the new atomic submarine. Meyer looked around the table for the butter.
“What’s with this kosher bit?” he asked. “Get me some butter, will you, darling, please?”
Sarah rose from the table, grinning. “You’re a heathen,” she said gently.
“I’m a heathen,” Meyer said, shrugging. “I’m a cop. I got to keep up my strength. Who knows, someday I’ll be out on a squeal with Mr. Cotton, and we’ll capture a criminal wanted in twenty states, and Mr. Cotton will hand him his gun and say, ‘Hold this for me a minute, will you?’ For this, you need strength.”
“He shouldn’t have knocked, Daddy?” Susie asked.
“Darling,” Meyer said, “the man in that apartment was wanted for murder. With a man who is wanted for murder, the only knocking you do is on his head.”
Susie giggled, and from the kitchen, Sarah said, “Meyer!”
“I should teach them to be kind to murderers?”
Sarah came back into the dining room. “That isn’t it,” she said. “You shouldn’t joke about hitting people on the head.”
“All right, it’s no joke,” Meyer admitted. “The only joke around is Cotton Hawes. You should see him. He was bleeding from a hundred holes.”
“Meyer!” Sarah said sharply.
“Well, he was! Do you want me to say he wasn’t bleeding from a hundred holes?”
“We happen to be eating.”
“I know. This is good steak. He had to go to the hospital. Nothing serious, but they bandaged him up like the invisible man. Crazy. He brought it on himself. Knocking! My God.”
“Was Steve angry?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t saying much. This Mr. Cotton should have calling cards printed. It should say on them, ‘Cotton Hawes Calling.’ He should knock and then slide one under the door. I’ll bet he lasts three days if he keeps knocking on doors. We’ll be identifying him from something they drag out of the River Dix.”
“Meyer!”
“All right, all right, already,” Meyer said. He smiled ingratiatingly. “Pass the salt, please, darling, would you please, Sarah darling?”
Lieutenant Peter Byrnes sat at the dinner table with his wife Harriet and his son Larry. He was a compact man, Byrnes, with a compact bullet head. He had tiny blue eyes set in a seamed and weathered face that was divided by a craggy nose. His upper lip was a little weak, but his lower lip was strong and pouting, and he owned a chin like a cleft boulder. His head sat snugly on his short, thick neck, as if he were ready to pull it in at a moment’s notice. His hands were thick hands belonging to an honest man who had worked hard all his life.
He sat at the table emanating silence, and Harriet watched him. The only sound in the room was the sound of eighteen-year-old Larry wolfing his food.
“All right,” Harriet said at last. “What is it?”
“I like Steve Carella,” Byrnes said. “I mean it. I liked that boy. By Christ, when we almost lost him last Christmas—”
“Did he do something wrong?” Harriet asked.
“No, he didn’t do anything wrong,” Byrnes said, shaking his head. “No, it isn’t him. I’m just saying I like him, and I like his wife. I look at that girl as if she’s my own daughter. I swear it. A man who runs a squad isn’t supposed to have favorites, but I like that boy. He’s a damned fine boy.”
Larry Byrnes said nothing. He ate with the complete abandon of a hungry adolescent. It had not been so long ago that Larry Byrnes’s hunger had not been for the normal adolescent pleasures. He had not forgotten that Steve Carella had been shot trying to solve a narcotics case in which he’d been involved. That was all behind them now, a part of the Byrnes existence they no longer discussed, but he had not forgotten. He knew why his father’s favorite cop was Steve Carella. His own favorite cop, since last Christmas, was a detective-lieutenant named Peter Byrnes. So he listened to his father attentively, but he nonetheless managed to gobble his food with total adolescent oblivion.
“I like Steve, too,” Harriet said. “What happened?”
“He almost got killed today,” Byrnes said.
“What!”
“Yes, yes. Four bullets that missed him by maybe half an inch.”
“Steve? How?”
“Hawes,” Byrnes said. “Cotton Hawes. They had to send him to me. Of all the precincts in the city, they had to pick mine. They take him out of a precinct which is a finishing school for young girls, and they send him to the 87th. The 87th! Of all the precincts! What did I do to deserve him? What did I do to deserve a man who knocks on a murderer’s door and announces that the police are there?”
“Is that what he did?” Harriet asked, astonished.
“That’s what he did.”
“What happened?”
“The guy opened fire. Almost ripped Steve’s head off. Hawes got himself beat to a pulp. What am I gonna do with him? Put him on tracing lost bicycles? I need all the cops I can get. Havilland may have been a terrible guy personally, but he wasn’t a bad cop. He really wasn’t, Harriet. Loose with his hands, yes, and I don’t go for that. But he wasn’t a bad cop. He didn’t pull stupid blunders. I can’t afford to risk a man like Steve Carella because of a stupid blunder a jerk like Cotton Hawes makes!”
“The one who fired? Is he the man who killed Roger?”
“We think so.”
“And this Hawes knocked on the door?”
“Yes! Can you believe it? Harriet, tell me the God’s honest truth. Would you have knocked on that door?”
“I’d have kicked it in,” Harriet said calmly, “and shot at the first thing that moved.”
“Good,” Byrnes said. “Would you like to join my squad?”
“I joined it the day we were married,” Harriet said, smiling.
Byrnes smiled, too. He looked at Larry. He signed heavily.
“Son,” he said, “I know a famine is expected this year, but go easy. We’ve been hoarding food in the basement.”
In the living room of Claire Townsend’s apartment, she and Detective Bert Kling were necking.
It was a pleasant spot to neck, much more comfortable than the backseat of an automobile. Ralph Townsend, Claire’s father, had retired at 10:30, leaving the living room to “the kids,” figuring that nothing very terrible or spectacular could happen to two people who were already engaged. On that particular night, he was absolutely right because Bert Kling didn’t have his mind on necking somehow. The lights were dimmed, and there was soft music coming from the record player, but all Kling could do was talk about Cotton Hawes.
“Knocks on the door,” he said. “This is me, Renfrew of the Mounted! Bang! Four shots come plowing through the wood. Steve almost collected his life insurance.”
“Are we going to talk about Cotton Hawes all night?”
“He’s a danger,” Kling said. “He’s a positive danger. I hope to hell I never answer a squeal with him.”
“He’s new. He’ll learn.”
“When? When all the cops on the squad are dead? Oh, Claire, this man is dangerous.”
“I wish you were a little more dangerous.”
“How do you mean?”
“You figure it out.”
“Oh,” Kling said. He kissed her perfunctorily. “But how can a man be so ignorant?” he persisted. “How can a man deliberately—”
“Is it considered impolite for policemen to knock on doors?”
“It’s considered wonderful,” Kling said. “Except when the man in the apartment is a suspected murderer.”
“This man was a suspected murderer?”
“This man was the man who threw Roger Havilland into the plateglass window.”
“Oh.”
“So would you have knocked?”
“I’d have said, ‘Kiss me, lover,’” Claire said.
“What?”
“Kiss me, lover,” she repeated.
So he kissed her.
The only man who wasn’t doing much complaining was Steve Carella. At home with Teddy, he had more important things on his mind. He did not like taking police work home with him. He saw too many things during the day that often left him feeling sick. He knew too many cops who had allowed the filth of criminal detection to wipe off on the floor mats of their homes. Teddy was a sweet girl; Teddy was his wife. Except when something was really troubling him, except when there was a nut too difficult to crack, he did not usually discuss the precinct or the squad with her. Besides, what had happened this afternoon was over and done with. It had been close, but he’d survived in one piece, and maybe Hawes had learned a lesson. The lesson undoubtedly would have been driven home with sharper impact had Carella been killed. Unfortunately, he had not. Hawes would have to derive from the lesson what he could—without the benefit of homicide.
Steve Carella kissed his wife. She was good to kiss. She was a brunette with brown eyes and full lips and a full body, and he enjoyed kissing her. The room was very quiet, dark except where the streetlamps below filtered up to the open windows. Steve Carella didn’t tell Teddy about Hawes.
Steve Carella had more important things on his mind.
On Boxer Lane, there walked a man who felt like a horse’s ass.
The man had adhesive tape all over his face. The man was six feet two inches tall and weighed 190 pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound healed.
The man’s name was Cotton Hawes.
The man was off duty, but he had nonetheless come back to Boxer Lane because he wanted to find out more about the man who’d thrown four slugs through the door and then beaten him silly. His pride was injured, and his face was injured, but most of all, he felt pretty stupid. He did not like to feel stupid. He’d have felt even more stupid had Carella been killed. He thought again of the absurdity of his knocking, thought again of those four shocking explosions that had sent Carella plummeting to the floor. Carella could be dead now, he thought. I could have killed Carella this afternoon.
The thought was not a pleasant one. For perhaps Hawes was an opinionated man, and perhaps he’d been raised on a squad where murderers were not-too-frequent guests, and perhaps he was impatient, and perhaps he was somewhat snide and disrespectful at times, but he thought highly of his profession, and he had a heart as wide as the Grand Canyon. He would no more have wanted Steve Carella dead than he’d have wanted himself dead. Nor had he wanted to commit such a stupid blunder that afternoon. He supposed he’d been too eager. He hadn’t stopped to think. Failure to think was a bad habit for a cop to develop, especially in a precinct like the 87th. It was becoming increasingly clear to Hawes that the 87th was a little bit different from anything he’d come across in his years on the force. Curiously, he enjoyed the challenge. He was a cop because he wanted to fight crime. There had been crime in the 30th, to be sure, but the crime there when compared to the crime in the 87th was somewhat like a glass of ginger ale set alongside a vodka martini.
Hawes had the feeling he could learn a lot in the 87th. He had the further feeling that Steve Carella was the man to teach him. He never would have given Carella the satisfaction of knowing it, but it was what he thought nonetheless. Naturally, his blunder that afternoon was not the sort of thing that endeared man to man, or so he thought. He did not know that Carella had already chalked off the incident. Had he known Carella, Hawes also would have known he was not a man to harbor grudges. He did not know Carella. He himself was at that stage of maturity where harboring grudges seemed like the right thing to do. And so, using his own personality as a sounding board, he automatically assumed that Carella would be harboring a grudge for what had happened that afternoon.
At the same time, it was important to Hawes that Carella like him. He knew that Carella was a good cop and an intelligent man. His instinct had told him that much. He wanted to learn from the good cop and be liked by the intelligent man. It was as simple as that. But he could do neither if Carella looked upon him as an idiot.
This was the reasoning that had brought him to Boxer Lane that evening of June 15. It was a Saturday night, and a young man of thirty-two conceivably could have found something more entertaining to do on a Saturday night—but Hawes, in his own mind, had a blunder to eradicate.
He had, in a sense, compounded his own felony that afternoon. Immediately after the shooting, Carella had insisted upon getting him to a hospital. He had flatly refused. He realized now that his refusal had been only an extension of his original stupidity. He had been in no condition to search an apartment, and he did not imagine that a man like Carella appreciated petty heroics. They had gone over the room for ten minutes when Carella came over to him.
“Look, Hawes,” he’d said, “you’re bleeding badly. If I have to knock you out and personally carry you to the hospital, I’ll do it. Do I have to knock you out?”
Hawes had sheepishly shaken his head, and Carella had driven him to the hospital. As a result, they had not got around to questioning any of the tenants. Hawes hoped to accomplish that tonight.
He found the superintendent in a basement room. The super was sprawled out face downward on a cot. The small room stank of whiskey fumes. Hawes went to the cot and shook him. The old man rolled over.
“Whuzzit?” he said. “Whoozzit?”
“Police,” Hawes said. “Wake up.”
The old man sat up and rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Whuddyawant?” he asked.
“Answers,” Hawes said.
“Whudtime’zit?” the old man asked.
“Eight-thirty.”
“Too early to get up. Too early in the morning.”
“It’s night. How long did Charles Fetterick live here?” Hawes asked.
“Lemme see your badge,” the super said.
“I was here this afternoon,” Hawes said. He flipped open his wallet to where his shield was pinned to the leather. “Are you sober?”
“I’m soberezza judge,” the super said.
“Can you understand me?”
“Sure.”
“Can you answer me?”
“Sure.”
“How long did Fetterick live here?”
“Month, two months. About that. He do something? Hey, heeeeey!”
“What is it?”
The super pointed a bony finger at Hawes’s face. “You’re the cop he beat up this afternoon, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” Hawes admitted.
“Then he sure did do something, huh?”
“He did worse than that,” Hawes said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Did he have any friends in the building?”
“I don’t know. I don’t bother with the tenants much. I make the steam, fix the plumbing, the electricity, stuff like that. I don’t socialize much. I’m what you call a non-mixer. I’m what you call a professional nonjoiner.”
“Fetterick married?”
“Nope.”
“Notice him here with girls?”
“Girls?”
“Girls.”
The super shrugged. “Never did notice. Long as a man doesn’t bang on the pipes for heat, I don’t much care what he does in his own apartment. I don’t own this building. I just make the steam, fix the plumb—”
“Yes, I know.”
“You might ask some of the tenants on his floor. They might know. Me, I don’t socialize much. I’m what you call a non—”
“I know,” Hawes said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Glad to be of assistance,” the old man said. He lay down and rolled over as Hawes left the room.
Hawes climbed to the third floor and knocked on Apartment 31. He knocked again. There was no answer. He kept knocking. A door opened. It was not the door upon which he knocked. It was the door to Apartment 32 next door. A girl stood in the doorway.
“They aren’t home,” she said.
The girl wore black slacks and a black sweater. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. At first glance, she seemed out of place in the tenement doorway, too chic, too sophisticated. She should have been standing in the entrance doorway to a penthouse, holding a martini.
“I’m a cop,” Hawes said, “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“You were knockin’ on thirty-one,” the girl said. “This is thirty-two.”
“I’m really interested in thirty-four,” Hawes said.
“What cup?” the girl asked, and Hawes didn’t get it. She looked at him glumly. “This about Fetterick?” she asked, apparently deciding to play it straight.
“Yes.”
“Come on in.”
Hawes followed her into the apartment. It was then that he noticed the black sweater was worn through at the elbows. The girl flicked on a light. “Want a drink?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
“What a drag, huh? Saturday night and no date.”
“Yeah,” Hawes said. “About Fetterick…”
“A jerk,” the girl said, shrugging.
“You knew him?”
The girl shrugged again. “Only to talk to. We took in the milk together, so to speak. Whenever it wasn’t stolen.”
“What was he like?”
“A jerk,” the girl said, “like I told you. Inferiority complex. Probably wanted to sleep with his mother when he was a kid. Like that.”
“Huh?” Hawes said.
“Oedipus,” the girl said. “Aggravated. Made him feel inferior. His father was a big man. He never could shape up to the fact.”
