“Common enough,” says Konig. “We see a lot of that here on the Force too.”
“As for Browder,” McCormick goes on, “you wouldn’t have thought he had any problems. Big tough son of a bitch. Wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with that one.” He laughs suddenly. “Should’ve seen the two of them together. Mutt and Jeff. Thick as flies.”
“Got pretty sticky, I imagine,” Konig says, so desolate now he can barely speak.
“Sticky? My God—downright embarrassing. Should never have tried to separate them though. Should’ve discharged them both. Medical discharge. Clean. Easy. Probably both still be alive if they hadn’t had to go off and hide out like that.”
“Well—” Konig sighs, his voice trailing off, wanting desperately to put down the phone, to go off somewhere himself and hide.
“Sad,” McCormick continues his dirge. “Nice boys.
Both of them. Weren’t hurting anybody. How’d they get messed up in this thing anyway?”
“Who knows?” says Konig, forcing himself to be civil. “I’m up to my neck here with nice boys and girls who get messed up in this city. It’s a big, noisy, scary place. I used to love this city. Now, quite frankly, Colonel”—Konig laughs bitterly—“the place gives me the goddamned creeps. Who knows? Who knows?” His voice trails off, then picks up again. “Do you think you might be able to release those medical and dental records? We’ll need copies, affidavits for our own files.”
“I’m trying to clear them for release right now. Probably be able to send them up by courier this weekend.”
“Thank you,” Konig says. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Not at all, Dr. Konig. I’m glad we’ve been able to clear this all up. You’ve done an incredible job up there.”
“Not all that incredible,” Konig says, his voice husky with fatigue. “Important thing now is to get the bastard who did it.”
“Got any leads?”
“Nothing very dramatic, I’m afraid. Oh, by the way—” Konig pauses oddly, as if he were on the verge of saying something, then changed his mind.
“Yes?” McCormick waits.
“Nothing. Nothing really. I was just wondering—”
“Yes?”
“—if you might send me their photographs. I have a picture of each man in my head, and I’m curious to see how close to the real thing my impression is.”
McCormick laughs. “No sweat. We’ll send you the ID photographs along with the records.”
“Thank you,” says Konig, “thank you very much.”
“Not at all.” McCormick sighs. “I’ve got the really unpleasant job ahead of me now.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Notifying the parents.”
»57«
4:00 P.M. FOREST PARK, QUEENS.
DeSoto glances at his wristwatch again. He knows now that something is wrong. There’s been a hitch somewhere. The man with the Gladstone bag appears restless too. Several times during the past hour he’s glanced at his wristwatch, then gazed around impatiently, as if he were waiting for someone. DeSoto’s main worry now is what he would do if the man should suddenly rise and start to go. Then he would have to follow suit, thus blowing his cover. That would be very awkward. Very awkward indeed.
Only a few minutes ago the fellow had stood up, turned around, and stared into the deep woods behind the carousel, as if he expected someone to emerge from there. For a moment it appeared he was about to go, and DeSoto held his breath and waited till the man sat down again.
Sitting there, the young cop toys with the idea of moving off to some different spot, out of sight, but where he can still keep his man under surveillance.
A steady stream of traffic drones languidly up and down Woodhaven Boulevard in front of the park. DeSoto glances wistfully toward it, hoping at any moment to see the gray unmarked patrol car roll into sight. But if Haggard is around someplace, there is no sign of it.
Suddenly, the man on the bench rises, muttering, and starts to go. The muscles in DeSoto’s legs coil, ready to spring, but he cannot make any precipitate motion, lest he give himself away. Instead, he forces himself to sit there, staring hard at the Sports Illustrated, while the man in the raincoat strides swiftly down the lane in the opposite direction.
In his agitation, with his mind racing a mile a minute, all of DeSoto’s attention has been riveted on the man. Only now does he notice that the Gladstone bag, with its $300,000 in unmarked tens and twenties, remains unattended on the bench.
Something like panic overtakes the young cop. Already the man in the raincoat has turned a bend in the lane and is out of sight. If he doesn’t go after him, he surely will lose him. Still, he cannot abandon the bag with the money. Perhaps Meacham’s people had set it up this way to force any tail to blow his cover. Haggard had provided for a whole set of contingencies. This was not one of them.
Near panic, DeSoto gazes desperately around for some sign of his own people. Seeing none, he bolts. In the next moment he’s on his feet, moving quickly toward-the bench where the old Gladstone sits, an air of malevolence about it, waiting spitefully for him. Snatching it on the run, he bounds forward down the lane after the raincoated figure receding now into a landscape of trees and shrubbery and people. Having blown his cover, he’s committed now. He must take the man.
Rounding the bend of the lane, he has a momentary glimpse of the fellow up ahead nearly two hundred yards off, moving toward one of the park exits on Woodhaven Boulevard. There’s a bus stop ahead and several buses are stopped there, their motors idling, disgorging and taking on passengers. It is toward those buses that DeSoto sees his man going.
In the next moment he’s loping like a wild man across the green toward the exit, the Gladstone and its sharp buckles banging cruelly at his knee.
The man in the raincoat is waiting in a queue behind three other people. There’s no one behind him, and the moment he steps onto the bus the doors close behind him. At that moment, DeSoto bursts through the park exit, gesturing wildly at the driver. For anyone sitting there, he simply looks like a man determined to catch a bus. But the driver doesn’t see him, or at least pretends not to, and the bus, with a wheeze and a sigh of its great diesels, starts to swing out onto the boulevard.
It’s then that De Soto, gasping like a winded creature, sees a gray blur of motion out of the corner of his eye. There’s an awful sound of brakes squealing, the crunch of metal impacting, glass shattering, the blare of horns, people shouting. In the next moment he sees the bus at a dead halt in the middle of the boulevard, traffic starting to back up behind it, and the gray unmarked patrol car, with a smashed right front fender, directly in front and athwart it where it had veered suddenly in front of the bus, blocking any further movement.
DeSoto is already at the bus, banging on its doors, when he sees Francis Haggard bulling toward him through the jammed traffic, his face purple with rage.
In the park, the oom-pah-pah of the “Gold and Silver Waltz” scratches fitfully out through the PA System, while the horses on the old carousel, rising and falling alternately, swing around and around. The children squeal with delight and shout back and forth at one another from horse to horse. On one of those carousel horses, a big gray-white Percheron with beautiful eyes and a pink muzzle, sits a young man. He might be anywhere between eighteen and thirty-five, with one of those perennially boyish faces that will look just as youthful even in old age. It is a refined, intelligent face, with thin, angular patrician features. The rather bookish air about him is heightened by an indoor pallor as well as by a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. The evident pleasure he takes in the carousel ride appears to be no less than that of the squealing children all about him.
He is looking out across the park now to the boulevard, where there appears to be some excitement. Traffic has stopped out there; crowds gather; horns blare. Several patrol cars out of the Queens 53rd Precinct have rolled up into the area, and the place is starting to fill with police. Stepping down out of the com
mandeered bus, several men—two in uniform, one a tall, white-haired plainclothes-man—appear to be escorting the man in the raincoat from the bus.
The young man sitting on the carousel smiles curiously to himself while the music plays and the beautiful old wooden Percheron with the big eyes and the flaring nostrils whirls him round and round.
»58«
“I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I know. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
“I don’t care whose fault it is, goddamnit. What about her? Where does this leave my kid now?”
5:15 P.M. MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE.
“I don’t know. Believe me, this guy knows nothing.” Haggard’s voice croaks dismally through the phone. “A small-time drifter from out of town. Served time on a couple of raps. Breaking and entering. Couple of vagrancy raps. Loitering for immoral purposes and so on. Nothing. Believe me, nothing. All he knows is he met a couple of guys in a Village bar.”
“And he doesn’t know who they are?”
“Never seen ’em before in his life. Don’t even know their names. All he knows is they offered him twenty-five dollars to go up to Grand Central, pick up a bag, take it out to Queens.”
“And he did it? No questions asked?”
“If you saw the guy,” Haggard growls almost pleadingly, “you’d know right away he’s not the kind to ask questions. They gave him ten down; the rest was supposed to be on delivery. He needed the bread. He was on the take. Believe me, Paul—the guy knows nothing. He’s too stupid.”
Konig sits hunched over his desk, a toppling pile of letters before him. There is a throbbing pain at his temples and he struggles to suppress his rage.
“So he was just a set-up?” Konig mutters through clenched teeth.
“’Fraid so. Just using him to test us.”
“And they made monkeys out of you.”
“Right—we blew it. That goddamned stupid battery,” Haggard fumes. “All my fault. Should’ve known enough to have a backup car. And this poor kid, DeSoto—stuck out there like that. Had no choice. Hadda blow his cover. Either that or risk losing the money or the guy.”
“Should’ve just sat there, goddamnit,” Konig shouts, his fist pummeling the desk so that papers and pencils fly askew. “Why the hell couldn’t he just sit there? If Meacham’s people were there, they wouldn’t have let that bag sit all by itself on that bench for too long.”
“I know, I know.” Haggard’s voice is full of self-reproach. “The kid was green, inexperienced. I know.”
“Arid you entrust my daughter’s life to some klutz rookie—”
“He’s not a rookie, Paul. He’s—”
“Oh, Christ.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus—will you quit saying that? Your sorrow’s not going to help her any. What do we do now?”
The silence at the other end is devastating. An admission of defeat. Finally Haggard summons the courage to speak. “I don’t know what we do now. Frankly, I’ve run out of leads. I’ve got nothing to go on. Zero. Goose eggs. I spoke to the Bureau today. They don’t have a helluva lot more. They’re still working from the bomb angle. They believe they can tie a number of so-called political bombings in the Northeast to Meacham and some of the people he served time with in Danbury.”
“How does that help us?”
“They’re trying to track down every one of these guys in the hope that they’ll know where Meacham is. I’ve identified one from this area. Fellow by the name of Klejewski, whose last place of residence, incidentally, was that bomb factory up in The Bronx. Even ran down his old lady out here in Astoria. I’m sure this guy’s in contact with Meacham. Couple of bombings in this area recently indicate they’re together again and working. If I could lay my hands on him, I’d find Meacham. I’d beat it out of him.”
“But the point is,” Konig snarls, his manner ugly, full of repudiation, “you can’t find him, can you? You can’t find anything. And the goddamned Bureau can’t find anything either. A handful of fleabag revolutionaries making monkeys of you all.”
“Paul—”
“You’re a fool. You’re all fools.”
“Paul, wait—”
“Forget it.”
“Listen to me, Paul. Listen—”
“Forget it, I said. Stay out of it now. I did it your way and it’s a botch. Now I take over. I’d rather make my own mistakes than yours. The next time will be my way—that is, if we’re lucky enough to have a next time.”
“Paul, listen to me. Wait a minute—listen—”
But Konig has already hung up. In a cold sweat he sits now in the dusky shadows of his office, a pain like an ax blade buried in his sternum, constricting his chest.
For a long while Konig sits there slumped over his desk, rubbing the pain in his chest, flailing himself with ghastly imaginings of what Meacham and his friends were at that moment doing to Lolly as repayment for the ludicrous episode in the park. He would certainly take it out on her now. Make her pay for her father’s treachery.
At any moment now he expects the phone to ring, to pick it up and hear one of those long, ghastly shrieks, then the obscene little snigger in the background. That would be Meacham’s idea of paying him back—the anguish and terror of his child. It was all his own fault too. He was responsible for her agony. Had he not mentioned anything to Haggard, had he simply delivered the money, done what they asked, she might be home now, sitting there with him that very moment.
Then indeed the phone does ring. He freezes there, unable to reach for it. It rings several times more while he stares at it with a mad fixity, waiting for Carver to pick it up. Then he realizes that it’s past five and she’s gone for the day, and he springs for it.
“Is that you?” comes a familiar voice from the other end.
“Yes. Maury?”
“Figured I’d find you in.” The Deputy Mayor’s voice is halting, stilted, even mildly self-deprecating. He seems oddly embarrassed as he flounders around with the kind of casual chitchat that is not his stock in trade. Then suddenly, out of the blue, he says, “The Mayor would like to see you tomorrow, Paul.”
“Oh?” Konig replies, listless, uncaring. “What time?”
“Any time that’s convenient for you.”
That in itself, Konig knows, is ominous. He has known the Mayor long enough to know that he doesn’t see people at their own convenience in order to pin medals on them.
“Anything special on his mind?” he asks bleakly.
There’s a pause and he can hear Benjamin squirming at the other end. “You haven’t heard anything up there, have you?”
“About what?”
“Something to the effect that a Daily News reporter got ahold of one of the prison guards at the Tombs?”
“No, I haven’t. What about it?”
“You haven’t heard anything.,about that?” Benjamin asks again.
“I just said I haven’t.” Konig slumps a bit lower in his seat and waits.
“Well”—a long, weary sigh issues from the Deputy Mayor—“I suppose it was inevitable. All this business about the body-snatching racket. And then your pal Carslin whooping it up over the Robinson matter. I guess it was inevitable.”
“What’s inevitable?” Konig gnashes his teeth. “What’s all this about the Daily News?”
“One of their investigative reporters—”
“Yes—”
“—got ahold of one of the prison guards at the Tombs—”
“I know—you’ve said all that.”
“Well, this guard made a full statement that he’d been witness to the beating of Linnel Robinson. According to this guy, when he came on the scene one guard was already in the cell with Robinson. What he was doing in there I don’t know. There’s a specific rule, strictly enforced, that under no circumstances does a guard ever enter a prisoner’s cell all by himself. If you ask me, this fellow went in there to settle a few old s
cores with Robinson, then found he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Three more guards rushed in with blackjacks—”
“This is all in the guard’s statement?” Konig interrupts.
“Yes. The first guard then held Robinson while the other three proceeded to beat the hell out of him. According to this fellow who spoke to the News, after that beating Robinson crawled’ out of his cell on all fours, bleeding from the face and head. He asked to see a doctor but they refused him. Instead they handcuffed him and tossed him back into solitary confinement where he was found two days later hanging from the bars of a cell window.”
“So?” Konig says, the shadows of his office deepening all around him.
“Blaylock has already suspended three guards,” the Deputy Mayor continues. “A fourth has left for reasons of ‘health.’”
“Blaylock showing the proper moral outrage, is he?”
“You ought to hear the stuff,” Benjamin fumes. “Makes you want to puke. All the self-righteous trumpetings. ‘This sort of thing will not be tolerated.’ ‘I will not permit—’ So forth and so on. You know the garbage.”
Konig’s fingers drum idly on his desktop, the sound, percussive and loud, echoing, through the shadows. “I fudged it up there at Binney’s this morning, Maury,” he announces suddenly. “Carslin knew I was fudging and so did Binney. And you, of course, wanted me to fudge it, Maury. Don’t deny it. ‘Don’t make waves’ is the gist of everything you’ve been telling me for the past week.”
“Now just a minute—”
“Not exactly in those words. But the essence of what you’ve been telling me is that the Medical Examiner’s Office couldn’t stand another scandal. No more bad publicity.”
“Well,” Benjamin snarls, the old truculence back in his voice, “if that’s what I’ve been telling you, it hasn’t helped things very much. As far as more bad publicity goes, you’ve got it. In spades. The story’ll be in every paper tomorrow morning. And what I neglected to tell you is that a couple of U.S. congressmen from Robinson’s district, who just happen to be running for re-election this year, are now demanding a full grand jury investigation. Binney has no choice other than to call the grand jury into session.”
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