Ed Mcbain: Cop Hater

Carella looked down at the back of the dead man's head. His face remained expressionless, except for a faint, passing film of pain which covered his eyes for a moment, and then darted away as fleetingly as a jack-rabbit.

"What'd they use?" he asked. "A cannon?"

"A .45," the first cop said. "We've got the cartridge cases."

"How many?"

"Two."

"Figures," Carella said. "Why don't we flip him over?"

"Ambulance coming?" Bush asked quietly.

"Yeah," the first cop said. "Everybody's late tonight."

"Everybody's drowning in sweat tonight," Bush said. '1 can use a beer."

"Come on," Carella said, "give me a hand here."

The second cop bent down to help Carella. Together, they rolled the body over. The flies swarmed up angily, and then descended to the sidewalk again, and to the bloody broken flesh that had once been a face. In the darkness, Carella saw a gaping hole where the left eye should have been. There was another hole beneath the right eye, and the cheek bone was splintered outward, the jagged shards piercing the skin.

"Poor bastard," Carella said. He would never get used to staring death in the face. He had been a cop for twelve years now, and he had learned to stomach the sheer, overwhelming, physical impact of death—but he would never get used to the other thing about death, the invasion of privacy that came with death, the deduction of pulsating life to a pile of bloody, fleshy rubbish.

"Anybody got a flash?" Bush asked.

The first cop reached into his left hip pocket. He thumbed a button, a circle of light splashed onto the sidewalk.

"On his face," Bush said.

The light swung up onto the dead man's face.

Bush swallowed. "That's Reardon," he said, his voice very quiet. And then, almost in a whisper, "Jesus, that's Mike Reardon."

Chapter THREE

there were sixteen detectives assigned to the 87th Precinct, and David Foster was one of them. The precinct, in all truth, could have used a hundred and sixteen detectives and even then been understaffed. The precinct area spread South from the River Highway and the tall buildings which still boasted doormen and elevator operators to the Stem with its delicatessens and movie houses, on South to Culver Avenue and the Irish section, still South to the Puerto Rican section and then into Grover's Park, where muggers and rapists ran rife. Running East and West, the precinct covered a long total of some thirty-five city streets. And packed into this rectangle —North and South from the river to the park, East and West for thirty-five blocks—was a population of 90,000 people.

David Foster was one of those people. David Foster was a Negro.

He had been born in the precinct territory, and he had grown up there, and when he'd turned 21, being of sound mind and body, being four inches over the minimum requirement of five feet eight inches, having 20/20 vision without glasses, and not having any criminal record, he had taken the competitive Civil Service examination and had been appointed a patrolman.

The starting salary at the time had been $3,725 per annum, and Foster had earned his salary well. He had earned it so well that in the space of five years he had been appointed to the Detective Division. He was now a 3rd Grade Detective, and his salary was now $5,230 per annum, and he still earned it.

At one a.m., on the morning of July 24th, while a colleague named Mike Reardon lay spilling his blood into the gutter, David Foster was earning his salary by interrogating the man he and Bush had picked up in the bar knifing.

The interrogation was being conducted on the second floor of the precinct house. To the right of the desk on the first floor, there was an inconspicuous and dirty white sign with black letters which announced DETECTIVE DIVISION, and a pointing hand advised any visitor that the bulls hung out upstairs.

The stairs were metal, and narrow, but scrupulously clean. They went up for a total of sixteen risers, then turned back on themselves and continued on up for another sixteen risers, and there you were.

Where you were was a narrow, dimly-lighted corridor. There were two doors on the right of the open stairway, and a sign labeled them LOCKERS. If you turned left and walked down the corridor, you passed a wooden slatted bench on your left, a bench without a back on your right (set into a narrow alcove before the sealed doors of what had once been an elevator shaft), a door on your right marked MEN'S LAVATORY, and a door on your left over which a small sign hung, and the sign simply read CLERICAL.

At the end of the corridor was the Detective Squad Room.

You saw first a slatted rail divider. Beyond that, you saw desks and telephones, and a bulletin board with various photographs and notices on it, and a hanging light globe and beyond that more desks and the grilled windows that opened on the front of the building. You couldn't see very much that went on beyond the railing on your right because two huge metal filing cabinets blocked the desks on that side of the room. It was on that side of the room that Foster was interrogating the man he'd picked up in the bar earlier that night.

"What's your name?" he asked the man.

"No hablo ingles," the man said.

"Oh, hell," Foster said. He was a burly man with a deep chocolate coloring and warm brown eyes. He wore a white dress shirt, open at the throat. His sleeves were rolled up over muscular forearms.

"Cual es su nombre?" he asked in hesitant Spanish.

"Tomas Perillo."

"Your address?" He paused, thinking, "Direccion?"

"Tres-tres-cuatro Mei-son."

"Age? Edad?"

Perillo shrugged.

"All right," Foster said, "where's the knife? Oh, crap, we'll never get anywhere tonight. Look, donde esta el cuchillo? Puede usted decirme?"

"Creo que no."

"Why not? For Christ's sake, you had a knife, didn't you?"

"No se."

"Look, you son of a bitch, you know damn well you had a knife. A dozen people saw you with it. Now how about it?"

Perillo was silent.

"Tiene usted un cuchillo?" Foster asked.

"No."

"You're a liar!" Foster said. "You do have a knife. What'd you do with it after you slashed that guy in the bar?"

"Donde esta el servicio?" Perillo asked.

"Never mind where the hell the men's room is," Foster snapped. "Stand up straight, for Christ's sake. What the hell do you think this is, the pool room? Take your hands out of your pockets."

Perillo took his hands from his pockets.

"Now where's the knife?"

"No se."

"You don't know, you don't know," Foster mimicked. "All right, get the hell out of here. Sit down on the bench outside. I'm gonna get a cop in here who really speaks your language, pal. Now go sit down. Go ahead."

"Bien," Perillo said. "Donde esta el servicio?"

"Down the hall on your left And don't take all night in there."

Perillo went out. Foster grimaced. The man he'd cut hadn't been cut bad at all. If they knocked themselves out over every goddamn knifing they got, they'd be busy running down nothing but knifings. He wondered what it would be like to be stationed in a precinct where carving was something you did to a turkey. He grinned at his own humor, wheeled a typewriter over, and began typing up a report on the burglary they'd had several days back.

When Carella and Bush came in, they seemed in a big hurry. Carella walked directly to the phone, consulted a list of phone numbers beside it, and began dialing.

"What's up?" Foster said.

"That homicide," Carella answered.

"Yeah?"

"It was Mike."

"What do you mean? Huh?"

"Mike Reardon."

"What?" Foster said. "What?"

"Two slugs at the back of his head. I'm calling the Lieutenant. He's gonna want to move fast on this one."