by Ed McBain
Among the other people who were braving the unseasonable winds and temperatures that Saturday were:
(1) A pretzel salesman at the entrance to the Clinton Street footpath.
(2) Two nuns saying their beads on the second bench into the park.
(3) A passionate couple necking in a sleeping bag on the grass behind the third bench.
(4) A blind man sitting on the fourth bench, patting his seeing eye German shepherd and scattering bread crumbs to the pigeons.
The pretzel salesman was a detective named Stanley Faulk, recruited from the 88th across the park, a man of fifty-eight who wore a gray handlebar mustache as his trademark. The mustache made it quite simple to identify him when he was working in his own territory, thereby diminishing his value on plants. But it also served to strike terror into the hearts of hoods near and wide, in much the same way that the green-and-white color combination of a radio motor patrol car is supposed to frighten criminals and serve as a deterrent. Faulk wasn’t too happy about being called into service for the 87th on a day like this one, but he was bundled up warmly in several sweaters over which was a black cardigan-type candy store-owner sweater over which he had put on a white apron. He was standing behind a cart that displayed pretzels stacked on long round sticks. A walkie-talkie was set into the top of the cart.
The two nuns saying their beads were Detectives Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling, and they were really saying what a son of a bitch Byrnes had been to bawl them out that way in front of Hawes and Willis, embarrassing them and making them feel very foolish.
“I feel very foolish right now,” Meyer whispered.
“How come?” Kling whispered.
“I feel like I’m in drag,” Meyer whispered.
The passionate couple assignment had been the choice assignment, and Hawes and Willis had drawn straws for it. The reason it was so choice was that the other half of the passionate couple was herself quite choice, a police-woman named Eileen Burke, with whom Willis had worked on a mugging case many years back. Eileen had red hair and green eyes, Eileen had long legs, sleek and clean, full-calved, tapering to slender ankles, Eileen had very good breasts, and whereas Eileen was much taller than Willis (who only barely scraped past the five-foot-eight height requirement), he did not mind at all because big girls always seemed attracted to him, and vice versa.
“We’re supposed to be kissing,” he said to Eileen, and held her close in the warm sleeping bag.
“My lips are getting chapped,” she said.
“Your lips are very nice,” he said.
“We’re supposed to be here on business,” Eileen said.
“Mmm,” he answered.
“Get your hand off my behind,” she said.
“Oh, is that your behind?” he asked.
“Listen,” she said.
“I hear it,” he said. “Somebody’s coming. You’d better kiss me.”
She kissed him. Willis kept one eye on the bench. The person passing was a governess wheeling a baby carriage, God knew who would send an infant out on a day when the glacier was moving south. The woman and the carriage passed. Willis kept kissing Detective 2nd/Grade Eileen Burke.
“Mm frick sheb bron,” Eileen mumbled.
“Mmm?” Willis mumbled.
Eileen pulled her mouth away and caught her breath. “I said I think she’s gone.”
“What’s that?” Willis asked suddenly.
“Do not be afraid, guapa, it is only my pistol,” Eileen said, and laughed.
“I meant on the path. Listen.”
They listened.
Someone else was approaching the bench.
From where Patrolman Richard Genero sat in plain-clothes on the fourth bench, wearing dark glasses and patting the head of the German shepherd at his feet, tossing crumbs to the pigeons, wishing for summer, he could clearly see the young man who walked rapidly to the third bench, picked up the lunch pail, looked swiftly over his shoulder, and began walking not out of the park, but deeper into it.
Genero didn’t know quite what to do at first.
He had been pressed into duty only because there was a shortage of available men that afternoon (crime prevention being an arduous and difficult task on any given day, but especially on Saturday), and he had been placed in the position thought least vulnerable, it being assumed the man who picked up the lunch pail would immediately reverse direction and head out of the park again, onto Grover Avenue, where Faulk the pretzel man and Hawes, parked in his own car at the curb, would immediately collar him. But the suspect was coming into the park instead, heading for Genero’s bench, and Genero was a fellow who didn’t care very much for violence, so he sat there wishing he was home in bed, with his mother serving him hot minestrone and singing old Italian arias.
The dog at his feet had been trained for police work, and Genero had been taught a few hand signals and voice signals in the squadroom before heading out for his vigil on the fourth bench, but he was also afraid of dogs, especially big dogs, and the idea of giving this animal a kill command that might possibly be misunderstood filled Genero with fear and trembling. Suppose he gave the command and the dog leaped for his own jugular rather than for the throat of the young man who was perhaps three feet away now and walking quite rapidly, glancing over his shoulder every now and again? Suppose he did that and this beast tore him to shreds, what would his mother say to that? che bella cosa, you hadda to become a police, hah?
Willis, in the meantime, had slid his walkie-talkie up between Eileen Burke’s breasts and flashed the news to Hawes, parked in his own car on Grover Avenue, good place to be when your man is going the other way. Willis was now desperately trying to lower the zipper on the bag, which zipper seemed to have become somehow stuck. Willis didn’t mind being stuck in a sleeping bag with someone like Eileen Burke, who wiggled and wriggled along with him as they attempted to extricate themselves, but he suddenly fantasied the lieutenant chewing him out the way he had chewed out Kling and Meyer this morning and so he really was trying to lower that damn zipper while entertaining the further fantasy that Eileen Burke was beginning to enjoy all this adolescent tumbling. Genero, of course, didn’t know that Hawes had been alerted, he only knew that the suspect was abreast of him now, and passing the bench now, and moving swiftly beyond the bench now, so he got up and first took off the sun-glasses, and then unbuttoned the third button of his coat the way he had seen detectives do on television, and then reached in for his revolver and then shot himself in the leg.
The suspect began running.
Genero fell to the ground and the dog licked his face.
Willis got out of the sleeping bag and Eileen Burke buttoned her blouse and her coat and then adjusted her garters, and Hawes came running into the park and slipped on a patch of ice near the third bench and almost broke his neck.
“Stop, police!” Willis shouted.
And, miracle of miracles, the suspect stopped dead in his tracks and waited for Willis to approach him with his gun in his hand and lipstick all over his face.
The suspect’s name was Alan Parry.
They advised him of his rights and he agreed to talk to them without a lawyer, even though a lawyer was present and waiting for him in case he demanded one.
“Where do you live, Alan?” Willis asked.
“Right around the corner. I know you guys. I see you guys around all the time. Don’t you know me? I live right around the corner.”
“You make him?” Willis asked the other detectives.
They all shook their heads. They were standing around him in a loose circle, the pretzel man, two nuns, the pair of lovers, and the big redhead with a white streak in his hair and a throbbing ankle in his thermal underwear.
“Why’d you run, Alan?” Willis asked.
“I heard a shot. In this neighborhood, when you hear shooting, you run.”
“Who’s your partner?”
“What partner?”
“The guy who’s in this with you.”
“I
n what with me?”
“The murder plot.”
“The what?”
“Come on, Alan, you play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.”
“Hey, man, you got the wrong customer,” Parry said.
“How were you going to split the loot, Alan?”
“What loot?”
“The loot in that lunch pail.”
“Listen, I never seen that lunch pail before in my life.”
“There’s thirty thousand dollars in that lunch pail,” Willis said, “now come on, Alan, you know that, stop playing it cozy.”
Parry either avoided the trap, or else did not know there was supposed to be fifty thousand dollars in the black pail he had lifted from the bench. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know nothing about no loot, I was asked to pick up the pail, and I done it.”
“Who asked you?”
“A big blond guy wearing a hearing aid.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?” Willis said.
The cue was one the detectives of the 87th had used many times before in interrogating suspects, and it was immediately seized upon by Meyer, who said, “Take it easy, Hal,” the proper response, the response that told Willis they were once again ready to assume antagonistic roles. In the charade that would follow, Willis would play the tough bastard out to hang a phony rap on poor little Alan Parry, while Meyer would play the sympathetic father figure. The other detectives (including Faulk of the 88th, who was familiar with the ploy and had used it often enough himself in his own squadroom) would serve as a sort of nodding Greek chorus, impartial and objective.
Without even so much as a glance at Meyer, Willis said, “What do you mean, take it easy? This little punk has been lying from the minute we got him up here.”
“Maybe there really was a tall blond guy with a hearing aid,” Meyer said. “Give him a chance to tell us, will you?”
“Sure, and maybe there was a striped elephant with pink polka dots,” Willis said. “Who’s your partner, you little punk?”
“I don’t have no partner!” Parry said. Plaintively, he said to Meyer, “Will you please tell this guy I ain’t got a partner?”
“Calm down, Hal, will you?” Meyer said. “Let’s hear it, Alan.”
“I was on my way home when …”
“From where?” Willis snapped.
“Huh?”
“Where were you coming from?”
“From my girl’s house.”
“Where?”
“Around the corner. Right across the street from my house.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Well, you know,” Parry said.
“No, we don’t know,” Willis said.
“For God’s sake, Hal,” Meyer said, “leave the man a little something personal and private, will you please?”
“Thanks,” Parry said.
“You went to see your girl friend,” Meyer said. “What time was that, Alan?”
“I went up there around nine-thirty. Her mother goes to work at nine. So I went up around nine-thirty.”
“You unemployed?” Willis snapped.
“Yes, sir,” Parry said.
“When’s the last time you worked?”
“Well, you see …”
“Answer the question!”
“Give him a chance, Hal!”
“He’s stalling!”
“He’s trying to answer you!” Gently, Meyer said, “What happened, Alan?”
“I had this job, and I dropped the eggs.”
“What?”
“At the grocery store on Eightieth. I was working in the back and one day we got all these crates of eggs, and I was taking them to the refrigerator, and I dropped two crates. So I got fired.”
“How long did you work there?”
“From when I got out of high school.”
“When was that?” Willis asked.
“Last June.”
“Did you graduate?”
“Yes, sir, I have a diploma,” Parry said.
“So what have you been doing since you lost the job at the grocery?”
Parry shrugged. “Nothing,” he said.
“How old are you?” Willis asked.
“I’ll be nineteen … what’s today?”
“Today’s the ninth.”
“I’ll be nineteen next week. The fifteenth of March.”
“You’re liable to be spending your birthday in jail,” Willis said.
“Now cut it out,” Meyer said, “I won’t have you threatening this man. What happened when you left your girl friend’s house, Alan?”
“I met this guy.”
“Where?”
“Outside the Corona.”
“The what?”
“The Corona. You know the movie house that’s all boarded up about three blocks from here, you know the one?”
“We know it,” Willis said.
“Well, there.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Just standing. Like as if he was waiting for somebody.”
“So what happened?”
“He stopped me and said was I busy? So I said it depended. So he said would I like to make five bucks? So I asked him doing what? He said there was a lunch pail in the park, and if I picked it up for him, he’d give me five bucks. So I asked him why he couldn’t go for it himself, and he said he was waiting there for somebody, and he was afraid if he left the guy might show up and think he’d gone. So he said I should get the lunch pail for him and bring it back to him there outside the theater so he wouldn’t miss his friend. He was supposed to meet him outside the Corona, you see. You know the place? A cop got shot outside there once.”
“I told you we know it,” Willis said.
“So I asked him what was in the lunch pail, and he said just his lunch, so I said he could buy some lunch for five bucks, but he said he also had a few other things in there with his sandwiches, so I asked him like what and he said do you want this five bucks or not? So I took the five and went to get the pail for him.”
“He gave you the five dollars?”
“Yeah.”
“Before you went for the pail?”
“Yeah.”
“Go on.”
“He’s lying,” Willis said.
“This is the truth, I swear to God.”
“What’d you think was in that pail?”
Parry shrugged. “Lunch. And some other little things. Like he said.”
“Come on,” Willis said, “do you expect us to buy that?”
“Kid, what’d you really think was in that pail?” Meyer asked gently.
“Well … look … you can’t do nothing to me for what I thought was in there, right?”
“That’s right,” Meyer said. “If you could lock up a man for what he’s thinking, we’d all be in jail, right?”
“Right,” Parry said, and laughed.
Meyer laughed with him. The Greek chorus laughed too. Everybody laughed except Willis, who kept staring stone-faced at Parry. “So what’d you think was in the pail?” Meyer said.
“Junk,” Parry said.
“You a junkie?” Willis asked.
“No, sir, never touch the stuff.”
“Roll up your sleeve.”
“I’m not a junkie, sir.”
“Let’s see your arm.”
Parry rolled up his sleeve.
“I told you,” parry said.
“Okay, you told us. What’d you plan to do with that lunch pail?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Corona is three blocks east of here. You picked up that pail and started heading west. What were you planning?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why were you heading away from where the deaf man was waiting?”
“I wasn’t heading anyplace.”
“You were heading west.”
“No, I musta got mixed up.”
“You got so mixed up you forgot how you came into the park, ri
ght? You forgot that the entrance was behind you, right?”
“No, I didn’t forget where the entrance was.”
“Then why’d you head deeper into the park?”
“I told you. I musta got mixed up.”
“He’s a lying little bastard,” Willis said. “I’m going to book him, Meyer, no matter what you say.”
“Now hold it, just hold it a minute,” Meyer said. “You know you’re in pretty serious trouble if there’s junk in that pail, don’t you, Alan?” Meyer said.
“Why? Even if there is junk in there, it ain’t mine.”
“Well, I know that, Alan, I believe you, but the law is pretty specific about possession of narcotics. I’m sure you must realize that every pusher we pick up claims somebody must have planted the stuff on him, he doesn’t know how it got there, it isn’t his, and so on. They all give the same excuses, even when we’ve got them dead to rights.”
“Yeah, I guess they must,” Parry said.
“So you see, I won’t be able to help you much if there really is junk in that pail.”
“Yeah, I see,” Parry said.
“He knows there’s no junk in that pail. His partner sent him to pick up the money,” Willis said.
“No, no,” Parry said, shaking his head.
“You didn’t know anything about the thirty thousand dollars, is that right?” Meyer asked gently.
“Nothing,” Parry said, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, I met this guy outside the Corona and he gave me five bucks to go get his pail.”
“Which you decided to steal,” Willis said.
“Huh?”
“Were you going to bring that pail back to him?”
“Well …” Parry hesitated. He glanced at Meyer. Meyer nodded encouragingly. “Well, no,” Parry said. “I figured if there was junk in it, maybe I could turn a quick buck, you know. There’s lots of guys in this neighborhood’ll pay for stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what?” Willis asked.
“Like what’s in the pail,” Parry said.
“Open the pail, kid,” Willis said.
“No.” Parry shook his head. “No, I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“If it’s junk, I don’t know nothing about it. And if it’s thirty G’s, I got nothing to do with it. I don’t know nothing. I don’t want to answer no more questions, that’s it.”