Ed McBain - Fat Ollie's Book

“I have to tell you the truth,” he said, “my heart stopped.”

Carella said nothing. He had called the lieutenant the night before, and told him about Ollie Weeks’s offer of a fifty-fifty bust, if ever there was one. He had told the lieutenant that you had to grab this city by the balls before it grabbed you first. He had told him that opportunity knocks but once, and it wasn’t every cop in the world who got invited to talk onLarry King.

“Oliver Wendell Weeks has spoken,” he’d said.

Byrnes had responded, “Let’s go for it.”

So here he was on the way uptown again, listening to Kling tell him all about how he’d felt upon seeing, after all this time, the woman who had once been the love of his life.

It had begun raining.

The Eight-Seven had investigated a case one March where it had rained almost constantly. They would later refer to it as “The Rain Case,” even though it had involved finding a severed hand in an airline bag. In this city, rain could actually be pleasant sometimes. Not this morning. The rain was driving and incessant, falling from the sky in buckets—to coin a phrase—cascading onto the windshield where the wipers worked in vain to maintain some semblance of visibility.

“I felt like telling her I used to love her a lot,” Kling said. “But the Loot was sitting right there, and besides I didn’t want to give her the idea there might be anything there anymore.”

“So whatdidyou say?” Carella asked.

“Well, Pete told me she’d be working with us from now on, so I said, ‘Glad to have you aboard,’ or something stupid like that, and we shook hands. It felt strange shaking hands. I mean…we were together a long time, you know, we were acouple.And now we were just shaking hands. Like strangers. That’s when I felt like telling her I used to love her a lot. While we were shaking hands.”

“We can park behind the station,” Carella said, “go in the back way.”

Kling leaned over the wheel, squinting through the windshield to locate the driveway, and then swung the car into the lot. He parked in a space as close to the building as he could find, but they both almost drowned before they’d stepped a foot out of the car to begin a mad dash to the rear door of the station house.

All of these old precincts had the same layout. They could just as easily have been entering the Eight-Seven as the Eight-Eight. They came into a long corridor illuminated by a naked light bulb. No one inside the door, it occurred to Carella that some lunatic with a bomb could just march in. He made a mental note to mention this to Byrnes when they got back home. Down the corridor, past an old defunct coal-burning furnace, up a flight of wooden steps to a door that opened onto the first-floor muster room. Same muster desk as the Eight-Seven’s, different sergeant behind it. He either recognized Carella and Kling, or else didn’t give a damn that they might be desperate terrorists.

Mobile radio rack to the left of them, rack with vests to the right. Up the iron-runged stairs to the second floor, past a men’s room, and a ladies’ room, and then through a gate in a slatted wooden railing identical to the one back home, and there you were, face to face with His Royal Girth.

“You’re late,” Ollie said, grinning.

It was 9:01A.M.

Here, too, were the familiar sounds and smells. The ringing telephones, the aroma of coffee brewing on a hot plate, the stale odor—especially on a rainy day—of a room that had seen too many days and nights of use and abuse, and there, yes, the faintest trace of a scent only cops could identify as coming from the black ink on the fingerprint table across the room. One of the windows across the room was open just a crack. There was even an unaccustomed whiff of fresh air. All so very familiar. Especially if you watched television.

“We found the bag,” Ollie said.

Kling wondered what bag.

For a moment, Carella wondered the same thing.

“Oh, the bag,” he said, remembering.

Ollie rose from his swivel chair like a whale off the coast of Mexico. He waddled across the room to where one of those small black airline bags on wheels rested near the water cooler. Yanking out the handle, he wheeled the bag over to his desk, hoisted it onto its top and—like a magician about to pull a rabbit from a top hat—unzipped the bag, and threw back the flap.

“This is what a city councilman packs for an overnight trip,” he said, and opened his hands wide. “Found it sitting on the stage, near the rear wall.”

The clothing in the bag was stuffed into it like laundry—which is what it undoubtedly was. These were the clothes Henderson had worn during his two-night stay in the state’s capital. Packed in the bag were a pair of men’s undershorts, two pairs of dark blue socks, a blue, long-sleeved, button-down shirt, a similar white shirt, a blue tropical weight suit, a blue-and-green-striped silk tie, a pair of black shoes, a toilet kit, and an electric razor.

“He was wearing jeans, loafers, and a faggoty pink sweater when he got killed,” Ollie said. “Probably wore them home on the plane.”

“Tells us nothing,” Kling said.

Ollie looked at him.

Carella braced himself for whatever was coming. With Ollie, you never knew. But nothing came. Ollie merely sighed heavily. The sigh could have meant “How come I always get stuck with stupid rookies?” (which Kling certainly wasn’t) or alternatively, “How come it’s raining on a day when we have so much to do?”

“How much time can you guys give me today?” he asked.

“The Loot says we’re at your disposal.”

“Really? Who’s gonna take care of the old lady in the bathtub?” Ollie asked, as if he gave a damn who’d stabbed her in the eye. Carella recognized the question as rhetorical. Kling didn’t know what they were talking about. “Here’s what I’d like to do today,” Ollie said, and began ticking the points off on his left hand, starting with the pinky. “One,I’llgo chase down this guy who was on the follow spot when Henderson caught it Monday morning, nail down what he saw, what he heard, and so on. Nobody leaves alive. Next,” ticking it off on his ring finger, “I wantyouguys to talk to the Reverend Gabriel Foster about a little fracas him and Henderson got into just a week or so ago.”

“Why us?” Carella asked.

“Let’s say the rev and me don’t get along too well, ah yes.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

“What kind of fracas?” Kling asked.

“Name calling, fists flying, like that.”

“Where was this?”

“A Town Hall debate. Hizzoner was there, too,thatshmuck.”

“You don’t really think Foster had anything to do with Henderson’s murder, do you?” Carella said.

“I think where there’s a nigger in the woodpile, you smoke him out,” Ollie said.

Kling looked at him.

“Something?” Ollie said.

“I don’t like that expression.”

“Well, gee, shove it up your ass,” Ollie said.

Carella stepped in at once. “Where do we see you later?”

“You mean when shall we three meet again?” Ollie said. “Ah yes. How about right here, back at the ranch, let’s say three o’clock.” He looked Kling in the eye and said, “I hope you know Henderson was for stiffening drug laws.”

“So?”

“So some people in the so-called black community might’ve thought he was trying to send their so-called brothers to jail.”

“So?”

“Targeting persons of color, they might have thought,” Ollie said.

“What some people up here call profiling. You ought to keep that in mind when you’re talking to him.”

“Thanks, we’ll keep it in mind,” Kling said.

“What I’m suggesting is Foster’s a well-known Negro agitator and rabble rouser. Maybe he got himself all agitated and aroused Monday morning.”