Ed Mcbain - Cop Hater

They shook hands. Savage stayed in the booth and ordered another Tom Collins. Carella went home to shower and shave for his date with Teddy.

She was dressed resplendently when she opened the door. She stood back, waiting for him to survey her splendor. She was wearing a white linen suit, white straw pumps, a red-stoned pin on the collar of the suit, bright scarlet oval earrings picking up the scream of the pin.

"Shucks," he said, "I was hoping I'd catch you in your slip."

She made a motion to unbutton her jacket, smiling.

"We have reservations," he said.

Where? her face asked.

"Ah Lum Fong," he replied.

She nodded exuberantly.

"Where's your lipstick?" he asked.

She grinned and went to him, and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and then she clung to him as if he were leaving for Siberia in the next ten minutes.

"Come on," he said, "put on your face."

She went into the other room, applied her lipstick and emerged carrying a small red purse.

"They carry those on the Street," he said. "It's a badge of the profession," and she slapped him on the fanny as they left the apartment.

The Chinese restaurant boasted excellent food and an exotic decor. To Carella, the food alone would not have been enough. When he ate in a Chinese restaurant, he wanted it to look and feel Chinese. He did not appreciate an expanded, upholstered version of a Culver Avenue diner.

They ordered fried wonton soup, and lobster rolls, and barbecued spare ribs and Hon Shu Gai and Steak Kew and sweet and pungent pork. The wonton soup was crisp with Chinese vegetables; luscious snow peas, and water chestnuts, and mushrooms, and roots he could not have named if he'd tried. The wontons were brown and crisp, the soup itself had a rich tangy taste. They talked very little while they ate. They dug into the lobster rolls, and then they attacked the spare ribs, succulently brown.

"Do you know that Lamb thing?" he asked. "A Dissertation on..."

She nodded, and then went back to the spare ribs.

The chicken in the Hon Shu Gai was snappingly crisp. They polished off the dish. They barely had room for the Steak Kew, but they did their best with it, and when Charlie —their waiter—came to collect their dishes, he looked at them reproachfully because they had left over some of the delicious cubes of beef.

He cut a king pineapple for them in the kitchen, cut it so that the outside shell could be lifted off in one piece, exposing the ripe yellow meat beneath the prickly exterior, the fruit sliced and ready to be lifted off in long slender pieces. They drank their tea, savoring the aroma and the warmth, their stomachs full, their minds and their bodies relaxed.

"How's August nineteenth sound to you?"

Teddy shrugged.

"It's a Saturday. Would you like to get married on a Saturday?"

Yes, her eyes said.

Charlie brought them their fortune cookies and replenished the tea pot.

Carella broke open his cookie. Then, before he read the message on the narrow slip of paper, he said, "Do you know the one about the man who opened one of these in a Chinese restaurant?"

Teddy shook her head.

"It said, 'Don't eat the soup. Signed, a friend.'"

Teddy laughed and then gestured to his fortune slip. Carella read it aloud to her:

"You are the luckiest man alive. You are about to marry Theodora Franklin."

She said "Oh!" in soundless exasperation, and then took the slip from him. The slender script read: "You are good with figures."

"Your figure," he said.

Teddy smiled and broke open her cookie. Her face clouded momentarily.

"What is it?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Let me see it."

She tried to keep the fortune slip from him, but he got it out of her hand and read it.

"Leo will roar—sleep no more."

Carella stared at the printed slip. "That's a hell of a thing to put in a cookie," he said. "What does it mean?" He thought for a moment. "Oh, Leo. Leo the Lion. July 22nd to August something, isn't it?"

Teddy nodded.

"Well, the meaning here is perfectly clear then. Once we're married, you're going to have a hell of a time sleeping."

He grinned, and the worry left her eyes. She smiled, nodded, and then reached across the table for his hand.

The broken cookie rested alongside their hands, and beside that the curled fortune slip.

Leo will roar — sleep no more.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

the man's name was not Leo. The man's name was Peter. His last name was Byrnes.

He was roaring.

"What the hell kind of crap is this, Carella?"

"What?"

"Today's issue of this . . . this goddamn rag!" he shouted, pointing to the afternoon tabloid on his desk. "August 4th!"

Leo, Carella thought. "What . . . what do you mean, Lieutenant?"

"What do I mean?" Byrnes shouted. "WHAT DO I MEAN? Who the hell gave you the authority to reel off this crap to that idiot Savage?"

"What?"

"There are cops walking beats in Bethtown because they spouted off nonsense like ..."

"Savage? Let me see that..." Carella started

Byrnes flipped open the newspaper angrily. "Cop Defies Department!" he shouted. "That's the headline. COP DEFIES DEPARTMENT! What's the matter, Carella, aren't you happy here?"

"Let me see ..."

"And under that 'MAY KNOW MURDERER,' DETECTIVE SAYS."

"May know___"

"Did you tell this to Savage?"

"That I may know who the murderer is? Of course not Jesus, Pete..."

"Don't call me Pete! Here, read the goddamn story."

Carella took the newspaper. For some strange reason, his hands were trembling.

Sure enough, the story was on page four, and it was headlined:

COP DEFIES DEPARTMENT

'MAY KNOW MURDER,'

DETECTIVE SAYS

"But this is..." "Read it," Byrnes said. Carella read it.

The bar was cool and dim.

We sat opposite each other, Detective Stephen Carella and I. He toyed with his drink, and we talked of many things, but mostly we talked of murder.

"I've got an idea I know who killed those three cops," Carella said. "It's not the kind of idea you can take to your superiors, though. They wouldn't understand."

And so came the first ray of hope in the mystery which has baffled the masterminds of Homicide North and tied the hands of stubborn, opinionated Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes of the 87th Precinct.

"I can't tell you very much more about it right now," Carella said, "because I'm still digging. But this cop-hater theory is all wrong. Ifs something in the personal lives of these three men, of that I'm sure. It needs work, but we'll crack it."

So spoke Detective Carella yesterday afternoon in a bar in the heart of the Murder Belt. He is a shy, withdrawn man, a man who—in his own words—is "not seeking glory."

"Police work is like any other kind of work," he told me, "except that we deal in crime. When you've got a hunch, you dig into it. If it pans out, then you bring it to your superiors, and maybe they'll listen, and maybe they won't."

Thus far, he has confided his "hunch" only to his fiancee, a lovely young lady named Theodora Franklin, a girl from Riverhead. Miss Franklin feels that Carella can "do no wrong," and is certain he will crack the case despite the inadequate fumblings of the department to date.

"There are skeletons in the closets," Carella said. "And those skeletons point to our man. We've got to dig deeper. It's just a matter of time now."

We sat in the cool dimness of the bar, and I felt the quiet strength emanating from this man who has the courage to go ahead with his investigation in spite of the Cop-Hater

Theory which pervades the dusty minds of the men working around him.