Ed Mcbain: Cop Hater

The police turned, instead, to their own files in the Bureau of Identification, and to the voluminous files in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And the search was on for a male, white Caucasian, under fifty years in age, dark-haired, dark-complected, six feet tall, weighing one-hundred-eighty pounds, addicted to the use of a Colt .45 automatic.

The needle may have been in the city.

But the entire United States was the haystack.

"Lady to see you, Steve," Miscolo said.

"What about?"

"Said she wanted to talk to the people investigating the cop killer." Miscolo wiped his brow. There was a big fan in the Clerical office, and he hated leaving it. Not that he didn't enjoy talking to the DD men. It was simply that Miscolo was a heavy sweater, and he didn't like the armpits of his uniform shirts ruined by unnecessary talk.

"Okay, send her in," Carella said.

Miscolo vanished, and then reappeared with a small bird-like woman whose head jerked in short arcs as she surveyed first the dividing railing and then the file cabinets and then the desks and the grilled windows and then the detectives on phones everywhere in the Squad Room, most of them in various stages of sartorial inelegance.

"This is Detective Carella," Miscolo said. "He's one of the detectives on the investigation." Miscolo sighed heavily and then fled back to the big fan in the small Clerical office.

"Won't you come in, ma'm?" Carella said.

"Miss," the woman corrected. Carella was in his shirt sleeves, and she noticed this with obvious distaste, and then glanced sharply around the room again and said, "Don't you have a private office?"

"I'm afraid not," Carella said.

"I don't want them to hear me."

"Who?" Carella asked.

"Them," she said. "Could we go to a desk somewhere in the corner?"

"Certainly," Carella said. "What did you say your name was, Miss?"

"Oreatha Bailey," the woman said. She was at least fifty-five or so, Carella surmised, with the sharp-featured face of a stereotyped witch. He led her through the gate in the railing and to an unoccupied desk in the far right corner of the room, a corner which—unfortunately—did not receive any ventilation from the windows.

When they were seated, Carella asked, "What can I do for you, Miss Bailey?"

"You don't have a bug in this corner, do you?"

"A... bug?"

"One of them dictaphone things."

"No."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Detective Carella."

"And you speak English?"

Carella suppressed a smile. "Yes, I ... I picked up the language from the natives."

"I'd have preferred an American policeman," Miss Bailey said in all seriousness.

"Well, I sometimes pass for one," Carella answered, amused.

"Very well."

There was a long pause. Carella waited.

Miss Bailey showed no signs of continuing the conversation.

"Miss ... ?"

"Shhl" she said sharply.

Carella waited.

After several moments, the woman said, "I know who killed those policemen."

Carella leaned forward, interested. The best leads sometimes came from the most unexpected sources. "Who?" he asked.

"Never you mind," she answered.

Carella waited.

"They are going to kill a lot more policemen," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan."

"Whose plan?"

"If they can do away with law enforcement, the rest will be easy," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan. First the police, then the National Guard, and then the regular Army."

Carella looked at Miss Bailey suspiciously.

"They've been sending messages to me," Miss Bailey said. "They think I'm one of them, I don't know why. They come out of the walls and give me messages."

"Who comes out of the walls?" Carella asked.

"The cockroach-men. That's why I asked if there was a bug in this corner."

"Oh, the... the cockroach-men."

"Yes."

"I see."

"Do I look like a cockroach?" she asked.

"No," Carella said. "Not particularly."

"Then why have they mistaken me for one of them? They look like cockroaches, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"They talk by radio-nuclear-thermics. I think they must be from another planet, don't you?"

"Possibly," Carella said.

"It's remarkable that I can understand them. Perhaps they've overcome my mind, do you think that's possible?"

"Anything's possible," Carella agreed.

"They told me about Reardon the night before they killed him. They said they would start with him because" he was the Commissar of Sector Three. They used a thermo-dis-integrator on him, you know that, don't you?" Miss Bailey paused, and then nodded. ".45 calibre."

"Yes," Carella said.

"Foster was the Black Prince of Argaddon. They had to get him. That's what they told me. The signals they put out are remarkably clear, considering the fact that they're in an alien tongue. I do wish you were an American, Mr. Carella. There are so many aliens around these days, that one hardly knows who to trust."

"Yes," Carella said. He could feel the sweat blotting the back of his shirt. "Yes."

"They killed Bush because he wasn't a bush, he was a tree in disguise. They hate all plant life."

"I see."

"Especially trees. They need the carbon dioxide, you see, and plants consume it. Especially trees. Trees consume a great deal of carbon dioxide."

"Certainly."

"Will you stop them, now that you know?" Miss Bailey asked.

"We'll do everything in our power," Carella said.

"The best way to stop them . . ." Miss Bailey paused and rose, clutching her purse to her narrow bosom. "Well, I don't want to tell you how to run your business."

"We appreciate your help," Carella said. He began walking her to the railing. Miss Bailey stopped.

"Would you like to know the best way to stop these cockroach-men? Guns are no good against them, you know. Because of the thermal heat."

"I didn't know that," Carella said. They were standing just inside the railing. He opened the gate for her, and she stepped through.

"There's only one way to stop them," she said.

"What's that?" Carella asked.

Miss Bailey pursed her mouth. "Step on them!" she said, and she turned on her heel and walked past Clerical, and then down the steps to the first floor.

Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.

When Carella and Havilland came into the hospital room, he was sitting up in bed, and aside from the bulky bandage over his right shoulder, you'd never know anything was wrong with him. He beamed a broad smile, and then sat up to talk to the two visiting detectives.

He chewed on the candy they'd brought him, and he said this hospital duty was real jazzy, and that they should get a look at some of the nurses in their tight white uniforms.

He seemed to bear no grudge whatever against the boy who'd shot him. Those breaks were all part of the game, he supposed. He kept chewing candy, and joking, and talking until it was almost time for the cops to leave.

Just before they left, he told a joke about a man who had three testicles.

Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

the three funerals followed upon each other's heels with remarkable rapidity. The heat did not help the classical ceremonies of death. The mourners followed the caskets and sweated. An evil, leering sun grinned its blistering grin, and freshly turned soil—which should have been cool and moist —accepted the caskets with dry, dusty indifference.

The beaches that week were jammed to capacity. In Clam's Point at Mott's Island, the scorekeeper recorded a recordbreaking crowd of two million, four hundred and seventy thousand surf seekers. The police had problems. The police had traffic problems because everyone who owned any sort of a jalopy had put it on the road. The police had fire-hydrant problems, because kids all over the city were turning on the johnny pumps, covering the spout with a flattened coffee can, and romping beneath the improvised shower. The police had burglary problems, because people were sleeping with their windows open; people were leaving parked cars unlocked, windows wide; shopkeepers were stepping across the street for a moment to catch a quick Pepsi Cola. The police had "floater" problems, because the scorched and heat-weary citizens sometimes sought relief in the polluted currents of the rivers that bound Isola—and some of them drowned, and some of them turned up with bloated bodies and bulging eyes.