by Ed McBain
What he figured was that Mrs. Byrnes had told him to use his own judgment.
The thing of it was he didn’t have any judgment on the matter. Suppose he didn’t bring a present, but a present was expected, he’d look like a jackass. Or suppose he did bring a present, but he was the only one there with a present, he’d still look like a jackass. The one thing Genero didn’t want was to look like a jackass. He sat there in his room in his mother’s apartment—he still lived with his mother, which was nice—and wondered what he should do.
If only he knew which of the detectives had been invited.
But he didn’t.
If only he knew which of the detectives he could trust.
He figured he could trust Carella, maybe. But he admired Carella, and he didn’t want Carella to think he was a jackass, asking whether he should bring a present or not, assuming Carella had even been invited to the party, which maybe he hadn’t.
Another detective he admired, perhaps even more than he admired Carella, was Andy Parker.
He called the squadroom and asked to talk to Parker.
Santoro, who was catching, said Parker had the four-to-midnight tonight.
Genero wondered if he should ask Santoro about the party. Instead, he asked for Parker’s home number. Parker answered the phone on the third ring.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
That was one of the things Genero admired about Parker. His gruff style.
‘Andy?’ he said.
‘Who’s this?’ Parker said.
‘Genero.’
‘What do you want?’ Parker said. ‘I ain’t due in till four.’
‘You’re gonna be there tonight, huh?’ Genero said.
‘What?’ Parker said.
‘In the squadroom.’
‘I got the duty, I’ll be there,’ Parker said.
‘With or without?’ Genero asked slyly.
‘What?’ Parker said.
‘You know,’ Genero said, and suddenly wondered if he did know. ‘Never mind, forget it,’ he said, and hung up.
Fuckin’ jackass, Parker thought.
* * * *
In the squadroom supply closet the timer inside the wooden box read 3:15 p.m. At midnight the timer had moved into the pie-shaped segment marked ‘Thursday.’ There were seven such segments on the timer, one for each day of the week. These segments were subdivided into fifteen-minute sectors.
Now, soundlessly, the timer moved into the 3:15-to-3:30 sector.
* * * *
A giant step on the way to Genero’s becoming a hero was his decision to buy the lieutenant a present. He figured he would make it something impersonal. He bought him a pair of pajamas. He also figured he would hide the present under his coat until he saw whether the other guys had bought presents or not. That way, he would be covered either way. If the other guys hadn’t bought presents, he would take the pajamas home and wear them himself; he had bought them in his own size, even though Byrnes was taller and heftier than he was.
He wondered whether the other guys would be bringing presents to the party.
He wondered how many other guys had been invited.
* * * *
There were sixteen detectives assigned to the 87th Squad. Of those sixteen, two were on vacation. Of the remaining fourteen, four had pulled the four-to-midnight shift on that fifth day of January and would have been at the squadroom even if they hadn’t received an invitation to the party. Unlike the blues, who worked five fixed eight-hour shifts and then swung for the next fifty-six hours, the detectives made out their own duty schedules. Usually—because vacation schedules and court appearances depleted the roster—only four of them were on duty in any given shift. The four detectives who arrived at the squadroom at fifteen minutes before the hour that afternoon were Parker, Willis, O’Brien, and Fujiwara. Each of them had received an invitation to the lieutenant’s party. None of them had discussed it with anyone else. Cops were very good at keeping secrets; in a sense secrets were a major part of the line of work they were in.
In the supply closet the timer moved into Thursday’s 3:45-to-4:00 p.m. sector.
* * * *
It began snowing at six-thirty.
The forecasters were still promising only light flurries. The people of this city knew that when the forecasters promised light flurries, they could expect a blizzard.
All of the other detectives who’d been invited to the party figured they’d better leave for the squadroom earlier than they’d planned.
The other invited detectives were:
Steve Carella.
Bert Kling.
Alexandre Delgado.
Cotton Hawes.
Richard Genero.
Arthur Brown.
Meyer Meyer.
And the guest of honor himself, Peter Byrnes.
Byrnes thought Carella was the guest of honor. That was because his invitation had said it was a party for Steve Carella. The handwritten scrawl on the flap of his invitation had been signed ‘Teddy.’ He had been tempted to call Teddy and ask if a present was expected. But he hated talking to that bitchy housekeeper of theirs. Instead, he had bought Carella a pair of cuff links and had hidden them in the top drawer of his desk.
As he dressed that night, he wondered why Teddy hadn’t cleared this with him first. A party in the squadroom? A squadroom was a place of business. Or had she gone downtown over his head, talked with a deputy inspector or something, asked if it would be okay to give a small party in the squadroom for her husband’s...
Her husband’s what?
Was it Steve’s birthday?
Byrnes didn’t think so.
He was vaguely troubled about the party in the squadroom. He hoped to hell no departmental rank walked in, and he hoped Teddy hadn’t planned to serve anything alcoholic. Only once could he remember a party in the squadroom, and that was when Captain Overman retired, more years ago than Byrnes could count. No booze. Just sandwiches and punch, though Byrnes later suspected one of the patrol sergeants had laced the punch with vodka. Still it wasn’t like Teddy not to have checked with him first. He was again tempted to call her, ask if she’d got some sort of clearance. Teddy knew how the goddamn department worked, she’d been a cop’s wife for a long time now.
Harriet watched him as he knotted his tie.
‘Who’s this party for?’ she asked cautiously. She figured the surprise was premised on his thinking the party was for someone else.
‘Steve,’ he said.
‘You didn’t tell me about it,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone,’ Byrnes said.
‘I’m not anyone, I’m your wife,’ Harriet said.
‘Still it’s supposed to be a surprise.’
She wondered suddenly if the party really was for Carella. On the phone the detective who’d called—whatever his name was—had only said, ‘It’s supposed to be a surprise, isn’t it?’ He hadn’t said it was a surprise for Pete.
‘Did you buy a present?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, a pair of cuff links.’
‘Gennario wanted to know if he should bring a present.’
‘Who?’
‘Gennario. One of your detectives.’
‘Genero?’
‘Yes, Genero, right. He called here, wanted to know if he should bring a present.’
‘What’d you tell him?’
‘I said I didn’t know.’
‘He’s a jackass,’ Byrnes said.
The clock on the dresser read six forty-five.
* * * *
‘What time will you be back?’ Annie Rawles asked.
‘I don’t know actually,’ Hawes said.
Annie was wearing one of his Christmas gifts. He had given her seven pairs of silk panties, one for each day of the week. The panties were in different colors. Blue for Monday. Green for Tuesday. Lavender for Wednesday. Purple for Thursday. Red for Friday. Black for Saturday. White for Sunday. She had asked him why he’d chosen those particular colors
for those particular days. He said they had to be blue for Monday because of Blue Monday, and then he’d simply worked his way through the color spectrum until he got to the weekend. Friday was the beginning of the weekend, and the appropriate kickoff color seemed to be red. Saturday was all slinky and sexy, hence black. Sunday was as pure as the driven snow—white. Elementary, my dear Watson.
This was Thursday, and she was wearing the purple panties.
She was also wearing a lavender garter belt, a lavender bra, one purple nylon stocking and one black, and a gold chain and pendant, which she never took off. Thirty-four years old with brown eyes and black wedge-cut hair, long slender legs, and small perfectly formed breasts, she stood in high-heeled purple satin slippers, her hands on her narrow hips, and looked more like a Bob Fosse dancer than a Detective/First Grade earning $37,935 a year. She also looked like a woman scorned. Hawes was looking at the clock on the dresser. It read six forty-eight...
‘Well, what kind of a party is it?’ she asked.
‘For the lieutenant,’ he said.
‘And it’s in the squadroom?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you always have parties up there at the old Eight-Seven?’
‘First one I can think of,’ he said.
Annie looked at him.
‘Are you telling me the truth?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is there really a party tonight...’
‘Of course there...’
‘... in the squadroom, of all places...’
‘That’s where...’
‘... or is there something you’d like to tell me?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like why you’re rushing out of here...’
‘Who’s rushing?’
‘... when I’m all decked out like a whore?’
‘A whore? You look gorgeous!’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this party earlier?’
‘The truth is I forgot about it. I got the invitation a few days before Christmas.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Would you like to see it?’
‘Yes, I would like to see it,’ Annie said. ‘Please,’ she added. She felt dumb in the sexy underwear. All dressed up for a party of her own, and nobody coming.
Hawes took the invitation from his jacket pocket.
Annie looked at it.
‘Why all the secrecy?’ she asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘A small party, huh?’ she said.
‘It looks that way, doesn’t it?’
‘How many people?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t discuss it with anyone. Harriet specifically...’
‘Well, if it’s in the squadroom and she’s telling you to keep it a secret, then I guess it has to be a small party.’
‘Yeah.’
‘The reason I’m asking all these questions...’
‘Mm?’
‘…is not because I’m a mastermind detective trying to figure out why anyone in her right mind would throw a party in a grubby squadroom, but only because I’m standing here half-naked wondering how long the damn party will last.’
‘Why? Do you have other plans?’
‘I’m thinking of making some,’ Annie said. ‘So the hooker outfit won’t be a total waste.’
He went to her. He took her in his arms.
‘I don’t have to leave here till seven-thirty,’ he said.
‘Great. That gives us what? Half an hour?’
‘Hookers can do it in ten minutes,’ he said.
‘Oh, but I’m not a real hooker, sir,’ she said, and clasped her hands together and rolled her eyes.
‘I’ll break away as soon as I can,’ Hawes said.
‘That may be too late,’ Annie said. ‘There’s a captain at the Seven-Two who’s been making eyes at me.’
‘What’s his name? I’ll go shoot him.’
‘Big talker,’ Annie said. ‘Gonna shoot a captain, can’t even take off a lady’s purple silk panties.’
* * * *
Genero got to the squadroom earlier than any of the others.
This was not because he was normally a punctual person but because he didn’t want to keep his coat on and look like a jackass. The pajamas he’d bought the lieutenant were hidden under his coat. If he took off the coat, everybody would see that he’d brought a present, and if none of the other guys had presents, he would look like a jackass. On the other hand, if he kept his coat on in the heated squadroom, everybody would still think he was a jackass. So what he did, he got to the squadroom at a little before seven-thirty, and he went directly to the supply closet without taking off his coat, and he put the present on top of a wooden box that had some kind of meter on its face.
That was the second time he came close to becoming a hero.
The timer inside the box silently moved into the 7:30-to-7:45 p.m. sector.
‘Hey, guys,’ Genero said, taking off his coat and hanging it on the rack. ‘How’s it going?’
None of the four-to-midnight detectives answered him.
Parker was wondering if the lieutenant’s wife had been dumb enough to invite this jackass to her party.
* * * *
Eileen Burke was crying.
Kling looked at the bedside clock, thinking he had to get out of here soon because of the snow. It was snowing like the arctic tundra out there, and the clock read seven thirty-two. Knowing this city, traffic would be stalled for miles—and the squadroom was all the way uptown.
But Eileen was crying.
‘Come on, honey,’ he said.
She was wearing what she’d worn to work that morning. Gray suit, black shoes with French heels, a white blouse. She had stopped wearing earrings ever since the rape. She had always considered earrings her lucky charm. Her luck had run out on the night of the cutting and the rape, and she had stopped wearing them.
They were in her apartment. He had rushed there the moment she called.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said.
‘I do,’ he said.
‘I was scared,’ she said. ‘I turned it down because I was scared.’
‘You had every right to be scared,’ he said.
‘I’m a cop!’ she said.
‘They shouldn’t have asked you in the first place. A gang of...’
‘That only makes it worse,’ she said. ‘A gang, Bert. A goddamn gang that’s running around raping women!’
‘They can’t expect you to handle a gang,’ he said. ‘Setting up a decoy for a gang is like...’
‘There’ll be backups,’ she said. ‘Four of them.’
‘A lot of hell good they’ll do if you’re jumped by a dozen guys. Who the hell requested this anyway?’
‘Captain Jordan.’
‘Where?’
‘The Seventh.’
‘I’ll go see him, I’ll talk to him person...’
‘No, you won’t!’ Eileen said. ‘It’s bad enough as it is! Chickening out in front of four hairbags who...’
‘What four? Are you talking about the backups?’
‘From the Seventh Squad. I don’t remember their names. All I remember is their eyes. What was in their eyes.’
‘Let one of them go out in drag,’ Kling said angrily. ‘Let him face a gang of...’
‘Their eyes said, “She’s scared.”’
‘You should have been scared.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘No. I’m a cop. Any other decoy cop wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. You got a gang out there? Piece of cake. When?’
‘That’s not true, and you know it.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Any woman who’d agree to go out there alone against a dozen men...’