Cop Hater (13 page)

"What cop? What're you talkin' about?"

"Look, Santez, don't play this too goddamn cute. You jumped one of our patrolmen as he came out of a bar. You beat him up, and one of your boys put a bullet in his shoulder. Now what the hell's the story?"

Santez considered Byrnes' question gravely.

"Well?"

"He's a cop?"

"What the hell did you think he was?"

"He was wearing a light blue summer suit!" Santez said, his eyes opening wide.

"What the hell's that got to do with it? Why'd you jump him? Why'd you shoot him?"

A mumbling was starting behind Santez. Byrnes heard the mumble and shouted, "Shut up! You've got your talk man, let
him
talk!"

Santez was still silent.

"What about it, Santez?"

"A mistake," Santez said.

"That's for damn sure."

"I mean, we didn't know he was a cop."

"Why'd you jump him?"

"A mistake, I tell you."

"Start from the beginning."

"Okay," Santez said. "We been giving you trouble lately?"

"No."

"Okay. We been minding our own business, right? You never hear from The Grovers, except when we protectin' our own, right? The last rumble you get is over there in The Silver Culvers' territory when they pick on one of our Juniors. Am I right?"

"Go ahead, Santez."

"Okay. Early today, there's a guy snooping around. He grabs one of our Seniors in a bar, and he starts pumpin' him."

"Which Senior?"

"I forget," Santez said.

"Who was the guy?"

"Said he was from a newspaper."

"What?"

"Yeah. Said his name was Savage, you know him?"

"I know him," Byrnes said tightly.

"Okay, so he starts askin' like how many pieces we got, and whether we got .45's, and whether we don't like the Law, things like that. This Senior, he's real hip. He tips right off this guy is trying to mix in The Grovers with the two bulls got knocked off around here. So he's on a newspaper, and we got a rep to protect. We don't want Law trouble. If this jerk goes back to his paper and starts printing lies about how we're mixed in, that ain't good for our rep."

"So what'd you do, Santez?" Byrnes asked wearily, thinking of Savage, and thinking of how he'd like to wring the reporter's neck.

"So this Senior comes back, and we planned to scare off the reporter before he goes printing any crap. We went back to the bar and waited for him. When he come out, we jumped him. Only he pulled a gun, so one of the boys plugged him in self-defense."

"Who?"

"Who knows?" Santez said. "One of the boys burned him."
     

"Thinking he was Savage."

"Sure. How the hell we supposed to know he's a cop instead? He had on a light blue suit, and he had blond hair, like this reporter creep. So we burned him. It was a mistake."

"You keep saying that, Santez, but I don't think you know just how big a mistake it was. Who fired that shot?"

Santez shrugged.

"Who was the Senior Savage talked to?"

Santez shrugged.

"Is he here?"

Santez had stopped talking, it seemed.

"You know we've got a list of every damn member in your gang, don't you, Santez?"

"Sure.

"Okay. Havilland, get the list. I want a roll call. Who-ever's not here, pick him up."

"Hey, wait a minute," Santez said. "I told you it was all a mistake. You going to get somebody in trouble just 'cause we mistake a cop?"

"Listen to me, Santez, and listen hard. Your gang hasn't been in any trouble recently, and that's fine with us. Call it a truce, call it whatever you want to. But don't ever think, and I mean
ever,
Santez, that you or your boys can shoot anybody in this goddamn precinct and get away with it. You're a bunch of hoods as far as I'm concerned, Santez. You're a bunch of hoods with fancy jackets, and a seventeen year old hood is no less dangerous than a fifty year old hood. The only reason we haven't been bearing down on you is because you've been behaving yourself. All right, today you stopped behaving yourself. You shot a man in my precinct territory —and that means you're in trouble. That means you're in big trouble."

Santez blinked.

"Put them all downstairs and call the roll there," Byrnes said. "Then get whoever we missed."

"All right, let's go," Havilland said. He began herding the boys out of the room.

Miscolo, one of the patrolmen from Clerical, pushed his way through the crowd and walked over to the lieutenant.

"Lieutenant, fella outside wants to see you," he said.

"Who?"

"Guy named Savage. Claims he's a reporter. Wants to know what the rumble was about this aft..."

"Kick him down the steps," Byrnes said, and he went back into his office.

Chapter THIRTEEN

homicide,
if it doesn't happen too close to home, is a fairly interesting thing.

You can really get involved in the investigation of a homicide case because it is the rare occurrence in the everyday life of a precinct. It is the most exotic crime because it deals with the theft of something universal—a man's life.

Unfortunately, there are other less interesting and more mundane matters to deal with in a precinct, too. And in a precinct like the 87th, these mundane matters can consume a lot of time. There are the rapes, and the muggings, and the rollings, and the knifings, and the various types of disorderly conducts, and the breakings and entries, and the burglaries, and the car thefts, and the street rumbles, and the cats caught in sewers, and oh, like that. Many of these choice items of crime are promptly turned over to special squads within the department, but the initial squeal nonetheless goes to the precinct in which the crime is being committed, and these squeals can keep a man hopping.

It's not so easy to hop when the temperature is high.

For cops, shocking as the notion may sound at first, are human beings. They sweat like you and me, and they don't like to work when it's hot. Some of them don't like to work even when it's cool. None of them like to draw Lineup, especially when it's hot.

Steve Carella and Hank Bush drew Lineup on Thursday, July 27th.

They were especially displeased about it because Lineup is held only from Mondays to Thursdays, and if they had missed it this Thursday, chances were they would not pull the duty until the following week and perhaps—just perhaps —the heat would have broken by then.

The morning started the way most mornings were starting that week. There was a deceptive coolness at first, a coolness which—despite the prognostications of television's various weather men and weather women—seemed to promise a delightful day ahead. The delusions and flights of fancy fled almost instantly. It was apparent within a half-hour of being awake that this was going to be another scorcher, that you would meet people who asked, "Hot enough for you?" or who blandly and informatively remarked, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity."

Whatever it was, it was hot.

It was hot where Carella lived in the suburb of Riverhead, and it was hot hi the heart of the city—on High Street, where Headquarters and the lineup awaited.

Since Bush lived in another suburb—Calm's Point, west and a little south of Riverhead—they chose to meet at Headquarters at 8:45, fifteen minutes before the lineup began. Carella was there on the dot.

At 8:50, Bush strolled up. That is to say, he more or less crawled onto the pavement and slouched over to where Carella was standing and puffing on a cigarette.

"Now I know what Hell is like," he said.

"Wait until the sun really starts shining," Carella said.

"You cheerful guys are always good for an early-morning laugh," Bush answered. "Let me have a cigarette, will you?"

Carella glanced at his watch. "Time we were up there."

"Let it wait. We've got a few minutes yet." He took the cigarette Carella offered, lighted it, and blew out a stream of smoke. "Any new corpses today?"

"None yet."

"Pity. I'm getting so I miss my morning coffee and corpse."

"The city," Carella said.

"What?"

"Look at it. What a goddamn monster."

"A hairy bastard," Bush agreed.

"But I love her."

"Yeah," Bush said noncommittally.

"It's too hot to work today. This is a day for the beach."

"The beaches'll be jammed. You're lucky you've got a nice lineup to attend."

"Sure, I know. Who wants a cool, sandy beach with the breakers rolling in and ..."

"You Chinese?"

"Huh?"

"You know your torture pretty good."

"Let's go upstairs."

They flipped their cigarettes away and entered the Headquarters building. The building had once boasted clean red brick and architecture which was modern. The brick was now covered with the soot of five decades, and the architecture was as modern as a chastity belt.

They walked into the first-floor marbled entryway, past the dick squad room, past the lab, past the various records rooms. Down a shaded hallway, a frosted glass door announced "Commissioner of Police."

"I'll bet
he's
at the beach," Carella said.

"He's in there hiding behind his desk," Bush said. "He's afraid the 87th's maniac is going to get him next."

"Maybe he's not at the beach," Carella amended. "I understand this building has a swimming pool in the basement."

"Two of them," Bush said. He rang for the elevator. They waited in hot, suffering silence for several moments. The elevator doors slid open. The patrolman inside was sweating.

"Step into the iron coffin," he said.

Carella grinned. Bush winced. Together they got into the car.

"Lineup?" the patrolman asked. "No, the swimming pool," Bush cracked. "Jokes I can't take in this heat," the patrolman said. "Then don't supply straight lines," Bush said. "Abbott and Costello I've got with me," the patrolman said, and then he lapsed into silence. The elevator crawled up the intestinal tract of the building. It creaked. It whined. Its walls were moist with the beaded exhalations of its occupants.

"Nine," the patrolman said.

The doors slid open. Carella and Bush stepped into a sunlit corridor. Simultaneously, they reached for the leather cases to which their shields were pinned. Again simultaneously, they pinned the tin to their collars and then walked toward the desk behind which another patrolman was seated. The patrolman eyed the tin, nodded, and they passed the desk and walked into a large room which served many purposes at Headquarters. The room was built with the physical proportions of a gymnasium, and did indeed have two basketball hoops, one at each end of the room. The windows were wide and tall, covered with steel mesh. The room was used for indoor sport, lectures, swearing in of rookies, occasional meetings of the Police Benevolent Association or the Police Honor Legion and, of course, the lineups.

For the purpose of these Monday-to-Thursday parades of felony offenders, a permanent stage had been set up at the far end of the room, beneath the balcony there, and beyond the basketball hoop. The stage was brilliantly lighted. Behind the stage was a white wall, and upon the wall in black numerals was the graduated height scale against which the prisoners stood.

In front of the stage, and stretching back towards the entrance doorways for about ten rows, was an array of folding chairs, most of which were occupied by detectives from all over the city when Bush and Carella entered. The blinds at the windows had already been drawn, and a look at the raised dais and speaking stand behind the chairs showed that the Chief of Detectives was already in position and the strawberry festival would start in a few moments. To the left of the stage, the felony offenders huddled in a group, lightly guarded by several patrolmen and several detectives, the men who had made the arrests. Every felony offender who'd been picked up in the city the day before would be paraded across the stage this morning.

The purpose of the lineup, you see—despite popular misconception about the identification of suspects by victims, a practice which was more helpful in theory than in actual usage—was simply to acquaint as many detectives as possible with the men who were doing evil in their city. The ideal setup would have been to have each detective in each precinct at each scheduled lineup, but other pressing matters made this impossible. So two men were chosen each day from each precinct, on the theory that if you can't acquaint all of the people all of the time, you can at least acquaint some of them some of the time.

"All right," the Chief of Detectives said into his microphone, "let's start."

Carella and Bush took seats in the fifth row as the first two offenders walked onto the stage. It was the practice to show the offenders as they'd been picked up, in pairs, in a trio, a quartet, whatever. This simply for the purpose of establishing an m.o. If a crook works in a pair once, he will generally work in a pair again.