Ed Mcbain - Fuzz

“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.”

“ Who? ” Cindy said.

“The deaf man,” Kling said again.