Эд Макбейн - Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here

“Hold it!” Parker shouted, and the man with the Snow White mask fired again. His slug caught Parker in the right shoulder. Parker bent low and pulled off a wild shot just as the man at the cash register opened fire, aiming for Parker’s belly, catching him in the leg instead. Parker grabbed for the curtain behind him, clutching for support, tearing it loose as he fell to the floor screaming in pain.

The two men in their Halloween masks ran out of the store and into the Sunday-morning sunshine.

There were 186 patrolmen assigned to the 87th Precinct, and on any given day of the week, their work schedule was outlined by a duty chart that required a PhD in Arabic literature to be properly understood. In essence, six of these patrolmen worked from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M., Monday through Friday, two of them serving as the captain’s clerical force, one as a highway safety patrolman, and the last two as community relations patrolman and roll call man respectively. The remaining 180 patrolmen were divided into twenty squads with nine men on each squad. Their duty chart looked like this:

All of which meant that patrolmen worked five tours for a forty-hour week, and then were off for fifty-six hours except when they were working the midnight to 8 A.M. shift, in which case they then worked only four tours and were off for eighty hours. Unless, of course, the fifth midnight tour happened to fall on a Friday or Saturday night, in which case they were required to work. All clear?

Patrolmen were supposed to be relieved on post as soon as possible after the hour by the squad that had just answered roll call in the precinct muster room. But most patrolmen began to drift back toward the station house shortly before the hour, so that seconds after the new shift trotted down the precinct steps, the old one entered the building and headed for the locker room to change into street clothes. There were a lot of cops in and around a police station when the shift was changing, and Sunday morning was no exception. If anything, the precinct was busier on Sunday because Saturday night brought thieves out like cockroaches and their resultant handiwork spilled over onto the day of rest.

This particular Sunday morning was more chaotic than usual because a cop had been shot, and nothing can galvanize a police department like the knowledge that one of their own has been gunned down. Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, who was in command of the sixteen detectives on the 87th Squad, saw fit to call in three men who were on vacation, perhaps on the theory that one wounded cop is worth at least three who were ambulatory. Not content to leave it at that, he then put in a call to Steve Carella at his home in Riverhead, ostensibly to inform him of the shooting.

Sitting behind his desk in the corner room upstairs, looking down at the front steps of the building, where the patrolmen filed out in pairs, the green globes flanking the steps and burning with sunshine as though fired from within, Byrnes must have known that Carella had worked the night shift and that the man did not now need a call from his superior officer. But he dialed the number nonetheless and waited while the phone rang repeatedly on the other end. When at last Carella answered, Byrnes said, “Steve? Were you asleep?”

“No, I was just getting into my pajamas.”

“Sorry to bother you this way.”

“No, no, what is it, Pete?”

“Parker just got shot in a grocery store on Ainsley.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus,” Carella said.

“Two hoods killed the proprietor, wounded Parker in the shoulder and leg. He’s been taken to Buenavista Hospital. It looks pretty serious.”

“Jesus,” Carella said again.

“I’ve already called in Di Maeo, Levine, and Meriwether. They’re on vacation, Steve, but I had to do it, I don’t like it when cops get shot.”

“No, neither do I.”

“I just thought I’d tell you.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you did, Pete.”

The line went silent.

“Pete?”

“Yeah, Steve?”

“What is it? Do you want me to come in, too?”

“Well, you had a long night, Steve.”

The line was silent again.

“Well... What do you want me to do, Pete?”

“Why don’t you see how you feel?” Byrnes said. “Go to bed, get some rest, maybe you’ll feel like coming in a little later, okay?” Byrnes paused. “I can use you, Steve. It’s up to you.”

“What time is it, anyway?” Carella asked.

Byrnes looked up at the wall clock. “Little after eight. Get some rest, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Carella said.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Byrnes said, and hung up. He rose from behind his desk, hooked his thumbs into his belt just above both hip pockets, and walked to the window overlooking the park. He was a compact man with gray hair and flinty blue eyes, and he stood looking silently at the sun-washed foliage across the street, his face expressionless, and then turned suddenly and walked to the frosted-glass door of his office, yanked it open, and went out into the squadroom.

A Marine corporal was sitting with Detective Carl Kapek at the desk closest to the lieutenant’s office. A swollen discolored lump the size of a baseball sat just over the Marine’s left eye. His uniform was rumpled and soiled, and he looked extremely embarrassed, his hands clasped in his lap rather like a schoolboy’s. He spoke in a very low voice, almost a whisper, to Kapek as the lieutenant walked past them to where Brown was on the telephone at his own desk.

“Right, I’ll tell him,” Brown said, and replaced the phone on its cradle.

“That about Parker?” Byrnes asked.

“No, that was Delgado over on South Sixth. Guy was on his way to church, four other guys grabbed him as he came out of his building, damn near killed him. Delgado’s on it now.”

“Right. The hospital call back on Parker?”

“Not yet.”

“Who’s that in the holding cell downstairs?”

“A burglar Simms picked up on Fifth and Friedlander.”

“You’d better get over to that grocery store, Artie.”

“That’ll leave Kapek all alone here.”

“I’ve got some men coming in. They should be here anytime now.”

“Okay then.”

“I want some meat on this, Artie. I don’t like my squad getting shot up.”

Brown nodded, opened the top drawer of his desk, and took from it a holstered .38 Detective’s Special. He fastened the holster to his belt just slightly forward of his right hip pocket, put on his jacket, and then went to the locker room to get his coat and hat. On his way out of the squadroom, he stopped at Kapek’s desk and said, “I’ll be at that grocery store, you need me.”

“Okay,” Kapek said, and turned back to the Marine. “I still don’t understand exactly how you got beat up,” he said. “You mind going over it one more time?”

The marine looked even more embarrassed now. He was short and slender, dwarfed by Kapek, who sat beside him in his shirtsleeves with his tie pulled down, collar open, straight blond hair falling onto his forehead, wearing a shoulder holster from which protruded the walnut butt of a .38.

“Well, you know, I got jumped, is all,” the Marine said.

“How?”

“I was walking along, and I got jumped, is all.”

“Where was this, Corporal Miles?”

“On The Stem.”

“What time?”

“Must’ve been about three in the morning.”

“What were you doing?”

“Just walking.”

“Going any place in particular?”

“I’d just left this bar, you see? I’d been drinking in this bar on Seventeenth Street, I think it was.”