Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Who called in the Officer-Assist, do you know?” he asked.

“Man on the beat,” the sergeant said. “Heard shooting on the roof, went up there to find Hoffman pinned down behind a chimney.”

“Thanks,” Reardon said, and started toward the building.

An Emergency cop stopped him at the door.

“We’ve got it, Reardon. Go home,” he said. He was wearing a ceramic vest, and he had a shotgun in his hands.

“That’s my partner up there,” Reardon said. “Go find yourself a jumper on a bridge.”

He went into the hallway. A naked light bulb hanging from a broken fixture. The locks on the mailboxes broken. The glass panel on the inner door broken. The stench of urine. This was a city of minor assaults. The graffiti spray-painted on the subway cars and on the walls of buildings and monuments — Grant’s Tomb, for Christ’s sake, obliterated by graffiti! You saw enough graffiti, you began to think that’s the way it should be, all that shit scribbled on the walls, you began to think that was the way it had always been. Beautiful art work, right? Fuckin’ mayor smiling, smiling. You like our graffiti art work, folks? How’m I doin’, folks? Ghetto blasters sitting on the shoulders of strolling kids, polluting the atmosphere, assaulting the ears the way graffiti assaulted the eyes. We don’t care about this city, the assaulters said. Fuck your city. And fuck you. We want you to be afraid to wear a gold chain on Fifth Avenue. We want you to put bars on your windows, we want you to tremble in your beds at night. We want to assault you incessantly, assault you with the knowledge that the barbarian ponies are massing outside the barricades, assault you with fear of the unknown. This whole fucking city was an assault on the imagination.

A shot rang out the moment Reardon opened the metal door to the roof. He threw himself flat on the tarred surface, saw Hoffman crouched behind a chimney as more shots shattered the stillness of the night. He crawled over to him.

“Hello, Chick,” he said.

“Well, well, the Cavalry,” Hoffman said.

“Plus a thousand nine-one-one-cops pounding up the stairs.”

“I hope they know how to handle a trigger-happy lunatic.”

They both ducked as more shots came. Brick dust flew off the chimney.

“What happened?” Reardon asked.

“I was cruising, saw this guy come out of the building, thought he was running to catch a bus or something.”

More shots.

“Crazy fuck won’t let up for a minute,” Hoffman said. “Anyway, he’s running, and a gun falls out of his pocket, drops on the sidewalk. He stoops to pick it up, I’m already out of the car by then, the crazy bastard throws a coupla shots at me.”

More shots. The men hugged the chimney wall.

“I’ve been counting,” Hoffman said. “He reloads every seven shots. Got to be an automatic.”

“Why’d he start shooting in the first place?” Reardon asked.

“Who the hell knows? Crazy.”

A single shot this time.

“That’s seven. Here’s where he changes the clip. Want to count with me, friend?”

Silence.

Then two shots.

More silence.

Another two.

“That makes four,” Hoffman said.

They waited.

Silence.

A single shot.

“Five,” Reardon said.

“He’s behind the pigeon coop,” Hoffman said. “You take the right, I’ll take the left.”

On the street below, an ambulance siren.

Another shot.

“Six,” Reardon said.

“Get set.”

They braced themselves. It seemed an eternity before the last shot came. “Go!” Hoffman yelled.

They broke from crouches into running strides, splitting into two targets as they came across the roof, Reardon on the right. Hoffman on the left. A small metallic click from behind the pigeon coop, a new clip being rammed home. Vaporized breath pluming from their mouths as they pounded across the tar. Reardon reached the corner of the pigeon coop. The man had his back to him.

“Freeze!” Reardon shouted, and the man whirled.

A Colt .45 automatic was in his right hand.

Reardon fired at once, taking the man in the shoulder. The man fell back against the pigeon coop. There was the frantic flutter of wings. The man slumped to the floor of the roof, lay in darkness against the wall of the coop. Breathing hard, Reardon reached down for him, rolled him over, cuffed his hands behind his back. A flashlight snapped on. Hoffman coming around the left-hand corner of the coop. He threw the beam into the man’s face.

“You make him?” he said.

Reardon looked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Harold Jurgens. The prick who got acquitted this morning.”

He reached down for him.

“Up!” he said.

The door to the roof snapped open, metal banging against brick. A 911-cop peered into the darkness, a shotgun in his hands. “You guys okay?” he said.

“Move it!” Reardon told Jurgens, and shoved out at him angrily, almost knocking him off his feet again. “We’re fine,” he told the 911-cop.

“You’re lucky,” the cop said. “We’ve got a dead kid in the hallway downstairs.”

The television commercials all said, “Make it Jamaica again.” Somebody up there must have been listening. Today was Jamaica in New York City. The tropics right here in the Big Apple. Fifty-four degrees outside, clear blue skies, not a hint of wind. In the squadroom, the detectives were sitting around in shirtsleeves. When Hoffman came in, he was wearing a sports jacket over a cotton turtleneck, no coat. He threw that morning’s Daily News on Reardon’s desk.

“Our boy made the front page,” he said.

“Yeah, great,” Reardon said, and looked at the headline:

“Wanna bet he walks again?” Reardon said sourly.

“Not this time,” Hoffman said.

“Wanna bet?”

The phone on his desk rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Fifth Squad, Reardon,” he said.

“Mr. Reardon?”

A woman’s voice. Young, hesitant.

“Yes?”

“This is Miss Sanderson.”

“Who?”

“Martha Sanderson.” A pause. “I was juror number five.” Another pause. “The Jurgens trial.”

“Yes, Miss Sanderson?”

“I’m calling to apologize,” she said.

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” Reardon said.

“I saw the story in this morning’s paper,” she said, and paused again. “We were wrong... and I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, softening, “that’s all right. Thanks for calling, I appreciate it.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Mr. Reardon,” she said, “I really am sorry.”

“I understand,” he said.

“I’m not sure you do.”

“Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“I feel terrible about this, really, I do. I wonder... is it possible we could... I’d like to explain further. I don’t want you to think we reached our verdict without careful thought. And deliberation. It was a wrong decision, but I do feel I owe you an explanation.”

“You’ve already explained, Miss Sanderson.”

“I meant... in person.”

“Well...”

“Do you think we could meet for a drink sometime later today? Or a cup of coffee? Something? Really, I feel I owe you something.”

There was another long silence on the line.

“Mr. Reardon?”

“A drink sounds fine,” he said.

“What’s a good time for you?”

“I’m through here at four,” he said, and looked at the clock.

“Could we make it a little past five?”

“Sure. Where are you?”