Ed McBain - And All Through the House

“You better get that animal out of here,” Miscolo said to no one and went off down the corridor.

“Why won’t you let me take the sheep to my sister?” the kid asked.

“ ’Cause it ain’t your sheep,” Meyer said. “It belongs to the zoo. You stole it from the zoo.”

“The zoo belongs to everybody in this city,” the kid said.

“Tell ’im,” Carmody said.

“What’s this I hear?” Bert Kling said from the railing. “Inside, mister.” His blond hair was wet with snow. He was carrying a huge valise in one hand, and his free hand was on the shoulder of a tall black man whose wrists were handcuffed behind his back. The black man was wearing a red-plaid Mackinaw, its shoulders wet. Snowflakes still glistened in his curly black hair. Kling looked at the sheep. “Miscolo told me it was a deer,” he said.

“Miscolo’s a city boy,” Carella said.

“So am I,” Kling said, “but I know a sheep from a deer.” He looked down. “Who made on the floor?” he asked.

“The sheep,” Meyer said.

“My sister’s present,” the kid said.

Kling put down the heavy valise and led the black man to the detention cage. “OK, back away,” he said to Carmody and Knowles and waited for them to move away from the door. He unbolted the door, took the cuffs off his prisoner and said. “Make yourself at home.” He bolted the door again. “Snowing up a storm out there,” he said and went to the coatrack. “Any coffee brewing?”

“In the clerical office,” Carella said.

“I meant real coffee,” Kling said, taking off his coat and hanging it up.

“What’s in the valise?” Hawes asked. “Looks like a steamer trunk you got there.”

“Silver and gold,” Kling said. “My friend there in the cage ripped off a pawnshop on The Stem. Guy was just about to close, he walks in with a sawed-off shotgun, wants everything in the store. I got a guitar downstairs in the car. You play guitar?” he asked the black man in the cage.

The black man said nothing.

“Enough jewelry in here to make the queen of England happy,” Kling said.

“Where’s the shotgun?” Meyer asked.

“In the car,” Kling said. “I only got two hands.” He looked at Hawes. “What happened to your head?” he asked.

“I’m getting tired of telling people what happened to my head,” Hawes said.

“When’s that ambulance coming?” Carmody asked. “I’m bleeding to death here.”

“So use the kit,” Carella said.

“And jeopardize my case against the city?” Carmody said. “No way.”

Hawes walked to the windows.

“Really coming down out there,” he said.

“Think the shift’ll have trouble getting in?” Meyer said.

“Maybe. Three inches out there already, looks like.”

Hawes turned to look at the clock.

Meyer looked at the clock, too.

All at once, everyone in the squad room was looking at the clock.

The detectives were thinking the heavy snow would delay the graveyard shift and cause them to get home later than they were hoping. The men in the detention cage were thinking the snow might somehow delay the process of criminal justice.

The kid sitting at Meyer’s desk was thinking it was only half an hour before Christmas and his sister wasn’t going to get the sheep she wanted. The squad room was almost as silent as when Carella had been alone in it.

And then Andy Parker arrived with his prisoners.

“Move it,” he said and opened the gate in the railing.

Parker was wearing a leather jacket that made him look like a biker. Under the jacket, he was wearing a plaid-woolen shirt and a red muffler. The blue-woolen watch cap on his head was covered with snow. His blue-corduroy trousers were covered with snow. Even the three-day beard stubble on his face had snowflakes clinging to it. His prisoners looked equally white, their faces pale and frightened.

The young man was wearing a rumpled black suit, sprinkled with snow that was rapidly melting as he stood uncertainly in the opening to the squad room. Under the suit, he wore only a shirt open at the collar, no tie. Carella guessed he was twenty years old. The young woman with him- girl , more accurately-couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She was wearing a lightweight spring coat open over what Carella’s mother used to call a house dress, a printed-cotton thing with buttons at the throat. Her long black hair was dusted with snow. Her brown eyes were wide in her face. She stood shivering just inside the railing, looking more terrified than any human being Carella had ever seen.

She also looked enormously pregnant.

As Carella watched her, she suddenly clutched her belly and grimaced in pain. He realized all at once that she was already in labor.

“I said move it,” Parker said, and it seemed to Carella that he actually would push the pregnant girl into the squad room. Instead, he shoved past the couple and went directly to the coatrack. “Sit down over there,” he said, taking off his jacket and hat. “What the hell is that, a sheep?”

“That’s my sister’s Christmas present,” the kid said, though Parker hadn’t been addressing him.

“Lucky her,” Parker said.

There was only one chair alongside his desk. The young man in the soggy black suit held it out for the girl, and she sat in it. He stood alongside her as Parker look a scat behind the desk and rolled a sheaf of D.D. forms into the typewriter.

“I hope you all got chains on your cars,” he said to no one and then turned to the girl. “What’s your name, sister?” he asked.

“Maria Garcia Lopez,” the girl said and winced again in pain.

“She’s in labor,” Carella said and went quickly to the telephone.

“You’re a doctor all of a sudden?” Parker said and turned to the girl again. “How old are you, Maria?” he asked.

“Sixteen.”

“Where do you live, Maria?”

“Well, thass the pro’lem,” the young man said.

“Who’s talking to you?” Parker said.

“You were assin’ Maria—”

“Listen, you understand English?” Parker said. “When I’m talkin’ to this girl here, I don’t need no help from—”

“You wann’ to know where we live—”

“I want an address for this girl here, is what I—”

“You wann’ the address where we s’pose’ to be livin’?” the young man said.

“All right, what’s your name, wise guy?” Parker said.

“Jose Lopez.”

“The famous bullfighter?” Parker said and turned to look at Carella, hoping for a laugh.

Carella was on the telephone. Into the receiver, he said. “I know I already called you, but now we’ve got a pregnant woman up here. Can you send that ambulance in a hurry?”

“I ain’ no bullfighter,” Jose said to Parker.

“What are you, then?”

“I wass cut sugar cane in Puerto Rico, but now I don’ have no job. Thass why my wife an’ me we come here this city, to fine a job. Before d’ baby comes.”

“So what were you doing in that abandoned building?” Parker said and turned to Carella again. “I found them in an abandoned building on South Sixth, huddled around this fire they built.”

Carella had just hung up the phone. “Nothing’s moving out there,” he said. “They don’t know when the ambulance’ll be here.”

“You know it’s against the law to take up residence in a building owned by the city?” Parker said. “That’s called squatting, Jose, you know what squatting is? You also know it’s against the law to set fires inside buildings? That’s called arson, Jose, you know what arson is?”

“We wass cold,” Jose said.

“Ahhh, the poor kids were cold,” Parker said.