Ed Mcbain: Fuzz

Copyright

Fuzz

Copyright © 1968 by Ed Mcbain

Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright

© 2000 by RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information address

Editor@RosettaBooks.com

First electronic edition published 2000 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

ISBN 0-7953-0320-3

Contents

eForeword

Chapter

1

Chapter

2

Chapter

3

Chapter

4

Chapter

5

Chapter

6

Chapter

7

Chapter

8

Chapter

9

Chapter

10

Chapter

11

Chapter

12

Chapter

13

Chapter

14

eForeword

In the big-city squad room of the 87th Precinct, the detectives have seen and heard just about everything. But novelist Ed McBain always discovers a new angle when he returns to them and his 1968 novel Fuzz is among his best. One of the 87th Precinct’s real heroes, Steve Carella, is at the center of this thriller, in which the police must find a serial assassin who is killing off city officials one by one, when his ransom demands are not met.

Ed McBain is a pseudonym for the American novelist Evan Hunter (b. 1926). Hunter published his first 87th Precinct novel in 1956 ( CopHater ), and the series now numbers well over 30 titles. These novels forever altered the style of the police procedural (a novel that explores the solving of a crime), and their impact on popular culture has been profound. The legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa based a film on one of McBain’s novels, and television series such as NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues owe them a huge debt. Hunter’s style, as McBain, captures the tough, combative atmosphere of urban police work with humor and humanity, and it is one of the treasures of modern American genre fiction.

RosettaBooks is the leading publisher dedicated exclusively to electronic editions of great works of fiction and non-fiction that reflect our world. RosettaBooks is a committed e-publisher, maximizing the resources of the Web in opening a fresh dimension in the reading experience. In this electronic reading environment, each RosettaBook will enhance the experience through The RosettaBooks Connection. This gateway instantly delivers to the reader the opportunity to learn more about the title, the author, the content and the context of each work, using the full resources of the Web.

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This is for my father-in-law,

HARRY MELNICK,

who inspired The Heckler,

and who must therefore take

at least partial blame for this one.

Oh boy, what a week.

Fourteen muggings, three rapes, a knifing on Culver Avenue, thirty-six assorted burglaries, and the squadroom was being painted.

Not that the squadroom didn’t need painting.

Detective Meyer Meyer would have been the first man to admit that the squadroom definitely needed painting. It merely seemed idiotic for the city to decide to paint it now, at the beginning of March, when everything outside was rotten and cold and miserable and dreary, and when you had to keep the windows shut tight because you never could get enough damn heat up in the radiators, and as a result had the stink of turpentine in your nostrils all day long, not to mention two painters underfoot and overhead, both of whom never would have made it in the Sistine Chapel.

“Excuse me,” one of the painters said, “could you move that thing?”

“What thing?” Meyer said.

“That thing.”

“ That thing.” Meyer said, almost blowing his cool, “happens to be our Lousy File. That thing happens to contain information on known criminals and troublemakers in the precinct, and that thing happens to be invaluable to the hard-working detectives of this squad.”

“Big deal,” the painter said.

“Won’t he move it?” the other painter asked.

“You move it,” Meyer said. “You’re the painters, you move it.”

“We’re not supposed to move nothing,” the first painter said.

“We’re only supposed to paint,” the second painter said.

“I’m not supposed to move things, either,” Meyer said. “I’m supposed to detect.”

“Okay, so don’t move it,” the first painter said, “it’ll get all full of green paint.”

“Put a dropcloth on it,” Meyer said.

“We got our dropcloths over there on those desks there,” the second painter said, “that’s all the dropcloths we got.”

“Why is it I always get involved with vaudeville acts?” Meyer asked.

“Huh?” the first painter said.

“He’s being wise,” the second painter said.

“All I know is I don’t plan to move that filing cabinet,” Meyer said. “In fact, I don’t plan to move any thing. You’re screwing up the whole damn squadroom, we won’t be able to find anything around here for a week after you’re gone.”

“We do a thorough job,” the first painter said.

“Besides, we didn’t ask to come,” the second painter said. “You think we got nothing better to do than shmear around up here? You think this is an interesting job or something? This is a boring job, if you want to know.”

“It is, huh?” Meyer said.

“Yeah, it’s boring,” the second painter said.

“It’s boring, that’s right,” the first painter agreed.

“Everything apple green, you think that’s interesting? The ceiling apple green, the walls apple green, the stairs apple green, that’s some interesting job, all right.”

“We had a job last week at the outdoor markets down on Council Street, that was an interesting job.”

“That was the most interesting job we ever had,” the second painter said. “Every stall was a different pastel color, you know those stalls they got? Well, every one of them was a different pastel color, that was a good job.”

“ This is a crappy job,” the first painter said.

“It’s boring and it’s crappy,” the second painter agreed.

“I’m still not moving that cabinet,” Meyer said, and the telephone rang. “87th Squad, Detective Meyer,” he said into the receiver.

“Is this Meyer Meyer in person?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Who’s this?” Meyer asked.

“First please tell me if I’m speaking to Meyer Meyer himself?”

“This is Meyer Meyer himself.”

“Oh God, I think I may faint dead away.”

“Listen, who …”

“This is Sam Grossman.”

“Hello, Sam, what’s …”

“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be talking to such a famous person,” Grossman said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, what is it? I don’t get it.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know. What is it I’m supposed to know?” Meyer asked.

“I’m sure you’ll find out,” Grossman said.

“There’s nothing I hate worse than a mystery,” Meyer said, “so why don’t you just tell me what you’re talking about and save me a lot of trouble?”

“Ah-ha,” Grossman said.

“You I need today,” Meyer said, and sighed.

“Actually, I’m calling about a man’s sports jacket, size thirty-eight, color red-and-blue plaid, label Tom’s Town and Country, analysis of suspect stain on the left front flap requested. Know anything about it?”