Ed McBain - Killer's Choice

Havilland, however, had once been a nice cop. That's the truth. Carella knew him when, and Meyer knew him when, and Lieutenant Byrnes knew him when, and a lot of other cops at the 87th knew Havilland before he became a bull.

He became a Havilland-bull as differentiated from a Carella-bull or a Kling-bull. He became a real bull. A bull who snorted and farted and burped and gored and roared and boffed like a bull. A bull. Havilland was simply a bull.

He became a bull because he decided there was no percentage in being a nice-type happy-guy smiling-faced cop. The way he decided was like this.

He was walking along one day minding his own business when he spotted a street fight in progress, and it seemed as if a lot of kids were ganging up on one nice-type happy-guy smiling-faced kid, and so Havilland stepped in like a hero. The kids, who'd been content up to then to be bashing in the head of a fellow street fighter, decided it would be more fun to play the Anvil Chorus on the head of Roger Havilland. Havilland had drawn his service revolver by that time, and he very politely fired a few shots into the air to let the boys know the Law was on the scene. One of the boys, not being terribly impressed by the Law, brought a lead pipe down on Havilland's right wrist and knocked the gun from his hand. That was when the other boys became musicians in earnest.

They played a chorus of Chopsticks and then a few bars of Night on Bald Mountain and then they did their famous version of To a Wild Rose , by which time they had succeeded in breaking Havilland's arm in four places. They also succeeded in leaving his face looking like a pound of chopped chuck, ground twice, thank you.

The compound fracture hurt. It hurt like hell. It hurt worse than hell because the doctors had to break the arm all over again since it would not set properly the first time around. Havilland had just made Detective 3rd Grade, and he thought perhaps the broken arm would kick him clear off the force. It didn't. It healed. Roger Havilland was a whole man again, except for the queer mental quirk his do-gooder intrusion had produced. He had, of course, been on the business end of a lead pipe before. No cop in the 87th survived very long if he didn't know how to cope with an arm swinging a lead pipe or a ball bat or a wrench or a broom or any one of a number of homemade weapons. But he had never been beat up while actually trying to help someone. Havilland even suspected that the kid he'd been trying to help was one of those who'd kicked him after he'd fallen and was dragged into an alley. This was certainly no way to treat a good Samaritan. This wasn't even a way to treat a bad Samaritan.

Sitting alone in his hospital room, Havilland figured it out. As far as he was concerned, they could all go and. Every last one of them could go and. Their mothers could go and. Their fathers could go and. The whole world could go and. Roger Havilland was watching out for Number One. Everybody else could go and. In Macy's window.

It was unfortunate.

A lot of people suffered because of what half a dozen kids did to Roger Havilland a long time ago.

Looking at it in another way, if Havilland had had the gumption to stick to his original premise, he might still be alive today. That's the trouble with people. You find a streak of human nature in almost every one of them. If Havilland could have stuck to being an out-and-out rat, he'd have been all right. No. He had to get noble.

Which is why it was funny the way he got killed.

He had left the squad at about 10.35. He'd told Carella and Hawes, who were working with him, that he wanted to check the streets. Actually, he was going down to get a cup of coffee, and then he would go home. When he got home, he would call Carella and say, 'Everything's quiet. I'm heading home.' When a cop's been on the force awhile, he learns these little tricks.

It was a pretty nice night and Havilland, only because he wanted a little air before he went into the subway, decided he really would walk around the streets a little. He was not looking for trouble. Havilland was one of those cops who consciously avoid trouble. If trouble came to Havilland, he would not back away from it. But look for it? No. Not Havilland. He would leave that to the heroes. The world was full of heroes.

Sometimes, the streets of the 87th were nice. It didn't have anything to do with the people in them. Havilland hated the people in the streets of the 87th. As far as he was concerned, all spies could go and. All kikes could go and. All wops could go and. All niggers could go and. In fact, all people could go and. Except Number One.

It was just that sometimes everything got quiet in the streets and you could feel the heartbeat of a city there, especially on a night close to summer when the sky was a shade of off-black, and the moon hung in the sky like a whore's belly button, and you smell the perfume of the city. On nights like that, Havilland remembered perhaps that he'd been born in the city, and that he'd once played Kick the Can on the city's streets, and that he'd once been in love with an Irish girl named Peggy Muldoon. This was a night like that.

So he walked the streets of the precinct, and he didn't say hello to anybody because everybody could go and. But he walked with his shoulders back and his head high and a sort of lopsided grin on his massive face, and he felt pretty good, even though he hated to admit it to himself.

There was a grocery store at the end of the street, and the man who owned the grocery store was called Tony Rigatoni, and everybody called him Tony-Tony, and Havilland decided he would stop in on Tony-Tony to say hello, even though he didn't particularly like Tony-Tony. It didn't hurt a man to say hello to someone before he went into the subway.

That is when the funny thing happened.

As Havilland approached Tony-Tony's grocery, he saw that someone was sitting on the sidewalk in front of the store. The person was well dressed and didn't look at all like a hood or a wino, and perhaps Havilland had drunk too deeply of the heady June air. Whatever the reason, Havilland didn't walk up to the man and say , 'Get on your feet, punk,' as was his wont to do. He sort of ambled over to him slowly and casually and then, standing in front of the plate glass window of the shop, he politely inquired, 'Are you all right, mister?'

Now this was a throwback to the day Havilland had stepped into that street brawl to defend the kid who was getting his lumps. This was a definite throwback, and perhaps Havilland felt that warning trigger click someplace inside his head because his hand snapped slightly upwards toward his shoulder holster, but it snapped too late.

The man on the sidewalk got up with a sudden lurch. He threw his shoulder against Havilland's chest and sent him flying backwards into the plate glass window. Then he ran off down the sidewalk.

Havilland didn't know that Tony-Tony was lying behind the counter of his grocery, badly beaten. He did not know that the young man had entered Tony-Tony's store and held him up, or that Tony-Tony had fired a shot from the .22 he kept under the cash register as the young man was departing. He did not know that Tony-Tony had collapsed from his beating immediately afterwards, or that the young man on the sidewalk was carrying a .22 calibre slug in his shoulder, which had dumped him on the sidewalk in the first place. He didn't know any of these things.

Havilland knew only that he was flying backwards, off balance. He knew only that he collided with the plate glass window, and that the window shattered around him in a thousand flying fragments of sharp splinters. He felt sudden pain, and he yelled, with something close to tears in his voice, 'You bastard! You dirty bastard! You can go and—' but that was all he said. He never said another word.