Ed McBain - Pusher

The other shops dripped with incandescence, molten Christmas trees fashioned of light, giant white wreaths, windows aglow with the pristine brilliance of a new snowfall. The shoppers hurried in the streets, their arms loaded with packages. The office parties were in full swing behind the stiff formal fronts of the buildings. File clerks kissed file clerks behind banks of file cabinets. Bosses lifted the skirts of secretaries, and promotions were promised, and raises were bandied about like memo slips, and boys from the shipping department tilted glasses with executives from wood-paneled offices. There were lipstick stains, and Scotch stains, and hurried phone calls to waiting wives, and hurried phone calls to husbands who were enjoying their own Christmas parties behind the equally stiff fronts of other buildings. There was happiness of a sort because this was late Friday afternoon, December 22nd, and this was the culmination of a long year's waiting. And the accountant who'd had his discreet marital eye on the pretty, young, blond receptionist could now greet her with more than a polite "Good morning." Sharing a highball by the water cooler, his arm could encircle her waist in Christmas friendliness. Her head could rest upon his shoulder in yuletide camaraderie. He could take her lips beneath the mistletoe, and he could do all this without the slightest feeling of guilt because the Christmas Party was an established tradition of the American culture. Husbands went to Christmas parties, and wives were never invited. Wives did not expect to be invited. For one day a year, the marital contract was temporarily revoked. Christmas parties were joked about later, the way a person will joke about a bloody dagger on his living-room coffee table, unwilling to acknowledge how it got there.

And in the streets, the shoppers walked. Time was short, and time was running out. The advertising executives who had goaded the public since before Thanksgiving were now busy getting drunk in their offices. But the public, caught in the commercial machinations of a holiday that had somehow grown out of all proportion to the simple birth in Bethlehem it represented, hurried and scurried and wondered and worried. Had Josephine's gift been expensive enough? Were all the Christmas cards mailed? What about the tree, shouldn't the tree have been bought by now?

Beneath it all, despite the gaudy plot of the advertising master minds, despite the frantic commercial rat race it had become, there was something else. There was, for some of the people, a feeling they could not have described if they'd wanted to. This was Christmas. This was the holiday season. Some of the people saw through the sham and the electrical glitter and the skinny Santa Clauses with straggly beards lining Hall Avenue. Some of the people felt something other than what the advertising men wanted them to feel. Some of the people felt good, and kind, and happy to be alive. Christmas did that to some people.

And so the city was drunken, and the city was goaded into near panic, and the streets were jammed with shoppers, and maybe the concrete looked cold and stiff and aloof—but it was the most wonderful city in the world, and it was never more wonderful than at Christmastime.

"This is Danny Gimp," the man told the desk sergeant. "I want to speak to Detective Carella."

The desk sergeant didn't enjoy talking to stool pigeons. He knew that Danny Gimp often came up with good information, but he considered all stool pigeons unclean, and it was an offense just talking to them.

"Detective Carella isn't here," the desk sergeant said.

"Do you know where I can reach him?" Danny asked. Danny was a man who'd been stooling for the police for as long as he could remember. He knew he was not respected for his talkative traits among members of the underworld, but the ensuing ostracism did not disturb him. Danny made his living as an informer, and quite curiously, he enjoyed helping the police. He had had polio as a child, with the result that one leg still carried a slight limp. His real surname was Nelson but very few people knew that, and even his mail came addressed to Danny Gimp. He was fifty-four years old, and very small all over, looking more like an undernourished adolescent than a full-grown man. His voice was high and reedy, and his face bore hardly any of the wrinkles or other telltale signs of age. He could not honestly say he liked cops, even though he liked helping them. There was one cop he did like. That cop was Steve Carella.

"Why do you want to reach him?" the desk sergeant asked.

"I think I may have some dope for him."

"What kind of dope?"

"When did you get promoted to the detective division?" Danny asked.

"If you want to get smart, stoolie, you can get off the line."

"I want Carella," Danny said. "Will you tell him I called?"

"Carella ain't taking any messages," the desk sergeant said.

"What do you mean?"

"He got shot this afternoon. He's dying."

"What!"

"You heard me."

"What!" Danny said again, stunned. "Steve got… Are you kidding me?"

"I'm not kidding you."

"Who shot him?"

"That's what we'd like to know."

"Where is he?"

"General Hospital. Don't bother going down. He's on the critical list, and I doubt if they're letting him talk to stoolies."

"He's not really dying," Danny said, almost as if to reassure himself. "Listen, he's not really dying, is he?"

"They found him half-froze and almost bloodless. They've been pumping plasma into him, but he took three slugs in the chest, and it don't look good."

"Ah, listen," Danny said. "Ah, Jesus." He was silent for a while.

"You finished, stoolie?"

"No, I… General Hospital, did you say?"

"Yeah. I told you, stoolie, don't bother going down. It'd make you uncomfortable. Half the bulls on the squad are there."

"Yeah," Danny said thoughtfully. "Jesus, that's a tough break, ain't it?"

"He's a good cop," the desk sergeant said simply.

"Yeah," Danny said. He was silent again and then he said, "Well, so long."

"So long," the desk sergeant said.

Because of the sergeant's warning, Danny Gimp did not get to the hospital until the next morning. He wrestled with the problem all that Friday night, wondering if his presence would be welcome, wondering if Carella would even recognize him. And even if Carella was in condition to say hello, Danny doubted if he'd want to. They had a going business arrangement, but Danny was keenly aware of the fact that an informer is not the most respected of men. Carella might very well spit at him.

He wrestled with his problem, and he didn't sleep that night. He awoke on Saturday morning with the problem still fresh in his mind. He did not know why, but he wanted to see Steve Carella before he died. He wanted to see him and say hello, and maybe shake hands with him. Perhaps it was the Christmas season. Whatever it was, Danny took some coffee and a doughnut, and then he dressed carefully, putting on his good suit and a clean white shirt and choosing his tie carefully as well. He wanted to look respectable. He was going to the hospital on a respectable visit, and the entire unrespectability of his life seemed suddenly in very sharp focus. It seemed very important to him that he show his concern for Steve Carella, and it seemed equally important that Carella should respect him for it.

On the way to the hospital, he bought a box of candy. The candy gave him a good many moments of doubt. There would undoubtedly be cops at the hospital. Hadn't the desk sergeant said so? And wouldn't it look stupid for a stool pigeon to come carrying a box of candy? He almost threw the candy away, but he did not. When a man went to visit someone in the hospital, he brought something, something to say "You're still with us, and you'll get well." Danny Gimp was entering the polite, respectable world of civilized society, and so he would obey the rules of that society.