Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

Sergeant McLaughlin sat behind the high muster desk on the right of the room, the telephone to his ear, a huge American flag on the wall behind him. McLaughlin was in his shirtsleeves. He weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and he was probably the only man in the precinct who constantly complained that it was too hot in here. “Just a second, Mike,” he said into the phone, and then, to Reardon and Hoffman, who were crossing the room toward the steps at the far end. “Your Santa Claus is kicking up a storm back there.”

“Back there” was what the cops called the 124 Room, which housed the precinct clerk, the computer, and the now virtually defunct Arrest Process room with its small detention cage and its fingerprinting table. Nowadays, most arrests were brought to Central Booking at Headquarters, not six blocks from the precinct itself. But where property was involved, as in robbery, burglary, or narcotics arrests, the perps were taken first to the precinct itself — where they were printed and where all the paperwork was done — before they were taken to Headquarters for formal booking. There were no holding cells at the Fifth. The only detention cage was in the 124 Room. Santa Claus was in that cage now, screaming his head off about his rights.

“Send him to the North Pole.” Hoffman said.

“When you gonna book him?” McLaughlin asked.

“Later,” Reardon said. “We’ve got a homicide.”

Inside the 124 Room, the clerk was sitting at the computer, performing whatever ritual was necessary to make the damn thing work. Santa Claus kept yelling and ranting, but the clerk never looked up from the keyboard. The computer’s true and honorable designation was FATN — Reardon didn’t know what the letters stood for. All the cops at the Fifth called it Fat Nellie. It was used to check warrants, car registrations, and so on, and it stored information from every precinct in the city. Only three men at the Fifth knew how to use it. In the detention cage, Santa Claus said, “I want a fucking lawyer!”

On the phone in the muster room, McLaughlin said, “So how’s it going up there, Mike?”

Hoffman and Reardon started up the steps to the second floor.

Behind them, Santa Claus was still yelling.

Their footfalls echoed on the iron-runged staircase.

The second-floor corridor opened almost immediately onto a half-wall behind which was a small room with metal filing cabinets, desks, and chairs. An American flag hung on the far wall, smaller than the one over the muster desk downstairs. A wooden cabinet with glass-paneled doors was against the wall under the flag. The inside of the cabinet was stacked with books. Its top was decorated with departmental trophies from when the room was used as part of the clerical office. The room, at ten o’clock on a cold night in December, was empty. A handsomely painted sign set high on the half-wall read — first in Chinese and then in English:

The Chinatown Project had been started initially to assist Chinese-speaking citizens with criminal complaints. Civilians speaking Chinese were now available at the precinct on a twenty-four-hour basis, but nowadays they seemed to be helping the residents of Chinatown with all their problems, including photocopying. A hand-lettered sign taped to the lower part of the half-wall read:

Reardon and Hoffman turned to the right.

They had both been turning to the right for a good many years now.

To the right was a doorway over which hung a sign reading:

An arrow was under the sign. It pointed to the left.

A smaller sign was beneath the arrow:

There was another arrow on this sign, and it too pointed to the left.

The detectives walked through the doorway and turned to the left.

This was home to them for a goodly part of each day. Up the staircase, turn to the right, walk through the doorway, turn to the left and into the small office that housed the Precinct Investigating Unit, a title now nonoperative. One of these days, Reardon thought, somebody is going to change the signs around here. Meanwhile, the 5th Precinct Investigating Unit was now known as the 5th P.D.U., which stood for 5th Precinct Detective Unit, but anybody who answered the telephone said, “Fifth Squad,” as a hangover habit from the old days. The NYPD changed its titles, and its rules and regulations, and its procedures as often as it changed its underwear. The only thing that never changed was the look of a squadroom. Detective squadrooms looked the same in every precinct in the city, no matter what they were called. Flaked and peeling apple green paint. Grilles over all the windows. The windows themselves encrusted with the grime of — in the case of the Fifth — more than a century. Bulletin boards with wanted notices. Clipboards hanging from nails on the walls. Metal filing cabinets: DO NOT REMOVE ANY FILE WITHOUT PERMISSION. An electric wall clock with a dangling wire leading to a wall outlet. Naked hanging light bulbs. No detention cage here in the Fifth’s squadroom; that was downstairs. Three teams of detectives worked out of this room, day and night. Four men to a team, day and night. This room never rested. This room was home to Hoffman and Reardon and ten other detectives like them. There were fifteen men working out of the Detective Unit: a lieutenant, two gold-shield sergeants, one Detective/1st Grade, one 2nd Grade, and ten 3rd Grades.

Detective Gianelli was on the phone when Hoffman and Reardon walked into the room. Detective Ruiz was at another desk, reading. Gianelli was forty years old, with curly black hair, a swarthy Mediterranean complexion, and a handlebar mustache. Ruiz was twenty-eight, light-skinned, as slender as a toreador. Neither of the men greeted Hoffman and Reardon.

“So what do you mean?” Gianelli said into the phone.

“Any calls for me?” Reardon asked Ruiz.

Ruiz did not look up from his book. “Who you expecting?” he asked. “The Commissioner?”

“I don’t want to know about twists, lands, and grooves,” Gianelli said into the phone. “I don’t under stand twists, lands, and grooves.”

“Impossible to get a straight answer from this guy,” Reardon said to Hoffman. “Yes or no, Alex?”

“No, your Honor,” Ruiz said.

“All I want to know is what kind of gun it was that fired the bullets,” Gianelli said into the phone. “That’s all I want to know.” He listened. “So okay, tell me then.” he said and picked up a pencil. “Yeah,” he said, writing. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks.” He put the phone back onto its cradle. “These guys at Ballistics give me a song and dance everytime I call,” he said to no one.

“Maybe they know you’re a musician,” Hoffman said.

“I send them some bullets, they start telling me about microscopes.”

“Go blow your horn at them, Gabriel,” Hoffman said.

“Who caught it out there?” Gianelli asked Reardon. “And don’t call me Gabriel,” he said to Hoffman.

“Guy named Ralph D’Annunzio,” Reardon said. “Owns the Luna Mare.”

“On Mulberry?” Ruiz asked, looking up from his book.

“Yeah.”

“My name is Arthur,” Gianelli said. “My mother calls me Arthur, my father calls me Arthur, the whole fuckin’ world calls me Arthur. Only in this shithouse does anybody call me Gabriel.”

“Sorry, Gabe,” Hoffman said, and winked at Reardon.

“He just opened that a few weeks ago,” Ruiz said. “Around Thanksgiving sometime.”

“You know him?” Reardon asked.

“I ate there once,” Ruiz said, and went back to his book. He was reading Cary and Eisenberg on corporations.