by Ed McBain
"What rest?"
"How about the cop you shot?"
"What?"
"How about that rope you put around Hernandez' neck?"
"What?"
"How about the slash job you did on Maria?"
"Listen, listen, I didn't—"
"How about shoving that old lady down the airshaft?"
"Me? Holy Jesus, I didn't do—"
"Which one did you do?"
"None of them! Holy Jesus, what do you take me for?"
"You shot that cop, Gonzo!"
"No, I didn't."
"We know you did. He told us."
"He told you nothing."
"Who?"
"This cop, whoever you're talking about. He couldn't have said it was me because I had nothing to do with it."
"You've got a lot to do with all of this, Gonzo."
"Stop calling me Gonzo. My name's Dickie."
"Okay, Dickie. Why'd you kill Hernandez? To get his two-bit business?"
"Don't be stupid!"
"Then why?" Byrnes shouted. "To drag my son in on it? How'd Larry's fingerprints get on that syringe?"
"How do I know? What syringe?"
"The syringe found with Hernandez."
"I didn't know there was one."
"There was. How'd you swing it?"
"I didn't."
"Were you trying to frame my son for this?"
"Stop harping on your son. Your son can go drop dead, for all I care."
"Who's the man that calls me, Gonzo?"
"I didn't know anybody called you Gonzo."
"Look, you rotten punk…"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Somebody called to tell me about my son and that syringe. Somebody's got something on his mind. Was he the guy at that card game?"
"I don't know who that guy was."
"The same guy who called me, isn't he?"
"I don't know who calls you."
"The guy who helped you kill Hernandez, isn't he?"
"I didn't kill anybody."
"And Maria, and the old lady…"
"I didn't kill anybody."
"You killed a cop," Willis snapped.
"Is he dead?" Collins asked.
The room was suddenly very quiet.
"What's wrong with that?" Collins said.
"You tell us, pal."
"You told me a cop got shot. You didn't say he was dead."
"No, we didn't."
"Okay, so how was I supposed to know about the goddamn bull? You didn't say he was dead, only that he got shot."
"We didn't say he was a bull, either," Byrnes said.
"What?"
"We said a cop. What makes you think he's a detective?"
"I don't know, I just thought so. From the way you were talking."
"His name is Steve Carella," Willis said. "You shot him on Friday, Collins, and he's still fighting for his life. He told us you shot him. Why don't you tell us the rest of it, and make it easy for yourself?"
"There's nothing to tell. I'm clean. If your cop dies, you ain't got a thing on me. I ain't got a gun, and I wasn't carrying no junk. So do me something."
"We're gonna do you a lot, pal," Havilland said. "In about three seconds flat, I'm gonna beat the crap out of you."
"Go ahead. See what that gets you. I ain't involved in none of this. Your cop is crazy. I didn't shoot him, and I got nothing to do with Hernandez, either. You going to build a friendship at the Junior Navals into a federal case?"
"No," Willis said, "but we're going to build your footprint into a murder case, that's for sure."
"My what?"
"The footprint we found near Carella's body," Willis lied. "We're going to check it against every pair of shoes you own. If it matches up you're—"
"We were standing on stone!" Collins shouted.
And that was it.
He blinked, realizing it was too late to turn back now, realizing they had him cold. "Okay," he said, "I shot him. But only because he was going to take me in. I didn't want to get tied in with this other stuff. I had nothing to do with killing Hernandez or his sister. Nothing. And I never saw that old lady in my life."
"Who killed them?" Byrnes asked.
Collins was silent for a moment.
"Douglas Patt," he said at last.
Willis was already starting for his coat. "No," Byrnes called, "I want him. What's his address, Collins?"
Chapter Sixteen
It was very cold up on the roof, colder perhaps than anyplace in the city. The wind swept around the chimney pots and ate into a man's bones. You could see the entire city almost from up there on the roof, the lights winking, a city of secrets, little secrets.
He stood for a moment and looked out past the rooftops, and he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong. The plan seemed like such a good one, and yet it had gone wrong. Too many people, he thought. Whenever there are too many people, things go wrong.
He sighed and turned his back to the cutting wind that whipped the clothes lines and the fragile panes of glass in the walls of the buildings. He felt very tired, and somehow very lonely. It shouldn't have worked out this way. A plan so good should have worked out better. Despondently, he walked to the pigeon coop. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, hanging the lock back on the latch. He stepped into the coop, and the pigeons—alarmed for a moment—beat their wings and then resolved their private fears and settled down again.
He saw the female fantail almost instantly.
She lay on the floor of the coop, and he knew at once that she was dead.
Gently, he bent down and picked her up, and he held her on his widespread hands, staring at her, as if staring would bring her back to life.
Everything seemed suddenly too much to bear. Everything seemed to have been leading to this ultimate, crushing defeat: the death of his fantail. He kept watching the bird, aware that his hands were trembling, but unable to stop them. He went out of the coop then, still holding the bird in his hands. He walked across the roof, and he sat with his back to one of the chimney pots. He put the bird down gently at his feet, and then—as if his hands were too idle now that they were empty—he picked up a loose brick and turned it over and over in his hands, like a potter working with wet clay. He was turning the brick, slowly, slowly, when the man came up onto the roof.
The man looked around for a moment and then walked directly to where he was sitting.
"Douglas Patt?" the man asked.
"Yes?" he answered. He looked up into the man's eyes. The eyes were very hard. The man stood with his shoulders hunched against the wind, his hands in his pockets.
"I'm Lieutenant Byrnes," the man said.
"Oh," Patt answered.
They looked at each other silently for a long time. Patt made no motion to rise. Slowly, he kept turning the brick over in his hands, the dead bird at his feet.
"How did you get to me?" he asked at last.
"Dickie Collins," Byrnes said.
"Mmm," Patt said. He didn't seem to care very much. He didn't seem at all interested in how the police had found him. "I figured he would be a weak link if you got onto him." Patt shook his head. "Too many people," he said. He looked down at the bird. He gripped the brick more tightly in one hand.
"What'd you hope to get out of this, Patt?" Byrnes asked.
"Me?" Patt said. He made a motion to rise, and Byrnes moved quickly and effortlessly, so that by the time Patt was squatting on his haunches he was looking into the level muzzle of Byrnes' pistol. But Patt seemed not to notice the gun. He seemed intent only on studying the dead bird at his feet. He moved the bird with one hand, holding the brick in the other hand. "Me? What did I want out of this? A chance, Lieutenant. Big time, Lieutenant."
"How?"
"This kid, Gonzo—you know about the Gonzo, don't you? Silly damn thing, isn't it? But sort of weird—this kid, Gonzo, he came to me and said, 'How do you like that? Annabelle tells me he's got a junkie
friend whose old man runs the dicks at the 87th.' That's what Gonzo said to me, Lieutenant."
Byrnes watched him. Patt had lifted the brick slowly, and now he brought it down almost gently, but with a gentle force, smashing it against the body of the dead pigeon. He brought back the brick again, and again he hit the bird with it. There was blood on the brick now, and feathers. He brought it back unconsciously, and then down again, almost as if he were unaware of what he was doing to the bird.
"I figured this was it, Lieutenant. I figured I'd get your son into a setup that looked pretty bad, and then I'd come to you, Lieutenant, and lay my cards on the table and say, 'This is how it stands, Lieutenant. Your son's story gets blabbed all over the newspapers unless I get your cooperation.' I had your son rigged for a murder rap, Lieutenant. I was sure you'd cooperate."
He kept pounding with the brick. Byrnes pulled his eyes away from the disintegrating bird.
"What kind of cooperation did you expect?"
"I push," Patt said. "But I'm afraid. I could really expand if I didn't have to be afraid all the time. I didn't want to take a fall. I wanted you to help. I wanted hands off from you or any of your dicks. I wanted to be free to roam the precinct and push wherever I wanted to, without being afraid of getting pinched. That's what I wanted, Lieutenant."
"You'd never have got it," Byrnes said. "Not from me, and not from any cop."
"Maybe not from you. But, oh, it was sweet, Lieutenant. I sold this little Annabelle jerk a bill of goods. I told him all I wanted was a syringe with your son's prints on it. He dragged your son in and gave him a free fix, and then he switched syringes before your son left that night. I was waiting. When your son took off, I went in to see Annabelle. He was nodding, half blind. I loaded a syringe with enough H to knock the top of his head off. He didn't even know I was injecting it. Then I took your son's syringe out of Annabelle's pocket, and I laid it on the cot beside him."
"Why the rope?" Byrnes asked.
Patt kept hitting the bird, pulverizing it with the brick, spewing feathers and blood onto the tar of the roof. "That was an afterthought. It occurred to me—Jesus, suppose they think it is a suicide? Or suppose they think it was just an accidental overdose? Where does that leave my murder frame? So I put the rope around Annabelle's neck. I figured the police would be smart enough to know it was tied there after he was killed. I wanted them to know it was homicide, because I was measuring your son for the rap. Your son was my bargaining tool, Lieutenant. My bargaining tool for a free precinct."
"A free precinct," Byrnes repeated.
"Mmm, yes," Part said. "But it didn't work out, did it? And then Maria, and the old woman—how do these things get so complicated?"
He stopped pounding and looked down at the tar suddenly. The bird was a crushed mass of bloody pulp and feathers. The brick was stained with blood, as were Patt's hands. He looked at the pigeon, and then he looked at the brick and his hands as if he were seeing them for the first time. And then, quite suddenly, he began sobbing.
"You'd better come with me," Byrnes said gently.
They booked him at the 87th. They charged him with the murder of three people. And after he'd been booked, Byrnes went up to his office, and he stood looking out over the park, and then he saw the clock in the park tower, and the clock told him it was five minutes to midnight.
Five minutes to Christmas.
He went to his telephone.
"Yes?" the desk sergeant said.
"This is the Lieutenant," Byrnes said. "Can I have a line, please?"
"Yes, sir."
He waited for his dial tone, and then he dialed his Calm's Point number, and Harriet answered the phone.
"Hello, Harriet," he said.
"Hello, Peter."
"How is he?"
"I think he's going to be all right," she said.
"He's better?"
"Better than he was, Peter. He doesn't seem… he hasn't been vomiting or fidgeting or behaving like a wild man. I think he's licked it physically, Peter. The rest is up to him."
"Yes," Byrnes said. "Is he awake?"
"Yes, he is."
"May I talk to him?"
"Certainly, darling."
"Harriet?"
"Yes?"
"I know I've been chasing around, but I wanted you to know… I mean, all this running around these past few days…"
"Peter," she said gently, "I married a cop."
"I know you did. I'm grateful for it. Merry Christmas, Harriet."
"Come home as soon as you can, darling. I'll get Larry."
Byrnes waited. In a little while, his son came to the phone.
"Dad?"
"Hello, Larry. How are you feeling?"
"Much better, Dad."
"Good, good."
There was a long silence.
"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry for the way… for, you know, what I've done. It's going to be different."
"A lot of things are going to be different, Larry," Byrnes promised.
"Will you be coming home soon?"
"Well, I wanted to wind up…" Byrnes stopped. "Yes, I'll be home very soon. I want to stop off at the hospital, and then I'll be right home."
"We'll wait up, Dad."
"Fine, I'd like that." Byrnes paused. "You really feel all right, Larry?"
"Well, I'm getting there," Larry said, and Byrnes thought he detected a smile in his son's voice.
"Good. Merry Christmas, son."
"We'll be waiting."
Byrnes hung up and then put on his overcoat. He was suddenly feeling quite good about everything. They had caught Patt, and they had caught Collins, and his son would be all right, he was sure his son would be all right, and now there remained only Carella, and he was sure Carella would pull through, too. Damnit, you can't shoot a good cop and expect him to die! Not a cop like Carella!
He walked all the way to the hospital. The temperature was dipping close to zero, but he walked all the way, and he shouted, "Merry Christmas!" to a pair of drunks who passed him. When he reached the hospital, his face was tingling, and he was out of breath, but he was more sure than ever before that everything would work out all right.
He took the elevator up to the eighth floor, and the doors slid open and he stepped into the corridor. It took a moment to orient himself and then he started off towards Carella's room, and it took another moment for the new feeling to attack him. For here in the cool antiseptic sterility of the hospital, he was no longer certain about Steve Carella. Here he had his first doubts, and his step slowed as he approached the room.
He saw Teddy then.
At first she was only a small figure at the end of the corridor, and then she walked closer and he watched her. Her hands were wrung together at her waist, and her head was bent, and Byrnes watched her and felt a new dread, a dread that attacked his stomach and his mind. There was defeat in the curve of her body, defeat in the droop of her head.
Carella, he thought. Oh God, Steve, no…
He rushed to her, and she looked up at him, and her face was streaked with tears, and when he saw the tears on the face of Steve Carella's wife, he was suddenly barren inside, barren and cold, and he wanted to break from her and run down the corridor, break from her and escape the pain in her eyes.
And then he saw her mouth.
And it was curious, because she was smiling. She was smiling and the shock of seeing that smile opened his eyes wide. The tears coursed down her face, but they ran past a beaming smile, and he took her shoulders and he spoke very clearly and very distinctly and he said, "Steve? Is he all right?"
She read the words on his mouth, and then she nodded, a small nod at first, and then an exaggerated delirious nod, and she threw herself into Byrnes' arms, and Byrnes held her close to him, feeling for all the world as if she were his daughter, surprised to find tears on his own face.
Outside the hospital, the church bells tolled.
It was Christmas day, and all was right
with the world.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 8c9cd17a-bb57-42b9-bd91-7a4f96e02b86
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 10.10.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.22, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Ed McBain
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