Reardon nodded.
Steadman pushed a button and the elevator began its descent. “Nice place they got, huh? Did you see the aquarium they got?” Reardon noticed that there was some delight in his voice, as if it were his own aquarium.
“Nice people, the Van Allens,” Steadman said, “real nice to everybody.”
“Yeah.”
When the penthouse elevator door opened Reardon found himself staring almost eye to eye with a young man who bore a striking resemblance to Wallace Van Allen. Reardon stepped aside, following Steadman into the lobby. Without a word, the young man leaped past him and into the elevator. Reardon turned for another look as the door closed.
“Who’s that?” he asked Steadman.
“Dwight Van Allen, Mr. Van Allen’s son.”
“Where’s his sister, the daughter?”
“She’s a weird one,” Steadman replied with visible caution. “She spends a lot of time in the park.”
6
The next morning Reardon looked up from his morning coffee in the precinct house to see an enormous man looming over his desk. He looked like the sort of man who never brought good news to anyone, whose complaints and irritabilities were always as exaggerated as himself.
“Harry Bryant,” the man said.
He was one of the largest men Reardon had ever seen. His arms hung massively from his shoulders, and each hand looked large enough to encircle a telephone pole. Reardon quickly surmised that such a man could easily sever the spine of a fallow deer with one blow.
“Sit down,” Reardon said.
Bryant sat down, and for a moment Reardon wondered if the chair would support him.
“Want some coffee?” Reardon asked.
“Nope.”
Reardon took a drink from his cup and examined Bryant’s face. He had light brown hair, balding at the top. His eyes were blue and very watery, giving him the appearance of being continually on the verge of tears. He had a small mouth with a thin lower lip and almost no upper lip at all. And there was something beneath the face which Reardon could not touch upon exactly – a kind of boiling honesty in large matters, coupled with heedless deviousness in small ones.
“I understand that you were on duty the morning the fallow deer were killed?” Reardon began.
“That’s right.” Bryant took a bent cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. “I was there.” He threw his head back and blew a smoke ring.
Sometimes, Reardon knew, an unnatural nonchalance while being interrogated was as damning as a fingerprint. But he did not think this was the case with Bryant. Rather, he suspected that Bryant was utterly innocent, knew it, and felt confident in that knowledge.
“The deer were killed at approximately three-thirty A. M.,” Reardon said. “Were you anywhere near the deer cage at around that time?”
Bryant looked at Reardon and smiled. “Can you keep a secret?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if I tell the Police Department something, do they have to blab to the Parks Department?”
“Depends on whether or not what you tell me is relevant to the case.”
“Well, suppose a guy was guilty of goofing off, and that’s all?”
“In that case, I would say that it has no relevance.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we can keep a secret.”
“Well, in that case,” Bryant said with a wink, “I was goofing off.”
“That’s okay,” Reardon said. “Like I said, that has nothing to do with the case.”
“I’m not the only slacker, you know. Hell, I bet you soak a little extra time out of the lunch hour, right?”
“Maybe.” Reardon shifted in his chair, impatient with Bryant’s cheekiness. “While you were in the park did you see anything unusual?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against the Parks Department?”
Bryant laughed. “Everybody who ever worked for that bunch of two-bit assholes has a grudge.”
“Do you know of anybody who might take it out on the fallow deer?”
“Hell, no!” Bryant exclaimed. “And if I’d seen that son of a bitch, seen him hurting those deer, I’d have broken his goddamn neck! He’d of looked like those deer before I got through with him!”
“Noble talked about hearing something while he was working in the elephant cages,” Reardon said. “A sound. Two sounds, really. A kind of harsh, grating sound and a kind of muffled one. Noble said it sounded like something being dragged.”
Bryant took a handkerchief from his back pocket and swabbed his brow. “Noble says he heard something like that?”
“Yes. Around three or three-thirty, something like that.”
“Oh, hell,” Bryant said, “that explains why I didn’t hear it. Like I said, I was goofing off.”
“You were not in the zoo around that time?”
“No, I was in a coffee shop.”
“Where?”
“On Second Avenue, over from the park. All-night place there. But, you know, you might ask Andros. He was on his way to the zoo around that time.”
“Who was?”
“Andros,” Bryant said. “You know, Petrakis.”
“The other workman?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought he was out sick.”
“Well, he was in a way,” Bryant said. “He called in sick on Sunday afternoon, I understand. But I saw him walking by the coffee shop at about three A.M. Maybe a little before.” Bryant stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Anyway, I called him in. He came in for just a minute, wouldn’t sit down. He’s been real upset lately on account of his wife’s been sick and he’s been thrown out of his apartment.”
“He was evicted?”
“Yeah, him and his whole goddamn family. I guess he couldn’t pay the rent because of the medical bills.”
“So the landlord evicted him?”
“That’s right,” Bryant said. “Wouldn’t you if you was his landlord?”
Reardon avoided asking himself that question. “But he came to work that night?”
“Yeah. He said he’d been busy with his kids, you know. The wife’s been sick and so he had to do all the work in the house.”
“And you say he was upset?”
“Yeah,” Bryant said, “upset and mad as hell.”
“Who was he mad at?”
“The landlord, who else?”
Reardon nodded.
“He was really pissed, you know what I mean?” Bryant said. “He didn’t know what he was going to do. He looked like he was about ready to give up on everything. He borrowed ten bucks from me, and he’s never done that before. I never seen him ask anybody on the job for a penny. But he was broke. I mean broke. So I gave him a ten spot. We was kind of friendly on the job, you know? We used to take our breaks together. We always used to go to this little coffee shop, the one I told you about, the one on Second Avenue.”
“Did you see where he went when he left the coffee shop?”
“Yeah, he walked out in the direction of the zoo.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. He crossed the street going toward the zoo, up Sixty-fourth Street,” Bryant said. “The coffee shop is right on the corner of Sixty-fourth Street and Second Avenue. I could see him for a good ways. He was walking toward the park.”
“Why did he decide to come to work?”
“Needed the money,” Bryant said. “Why do you decide to come to work?” He looked mockingly at Reardon. “He ran out of vacation time and sick time and all that, but they been letting him kind of work by the hour, you know?”
“What time did he leave the coffee shop?” Reardon asked.
“I don’t know for sure. About three A.M. or so, I guess.”
“How long were you in the coffee shop?”
“Too long. I should have been doing the aviary at about three.”
“Why weren’t you?”
“Have you ever owned a bird?”
“No,” Reardon said.
“Well, if you had you’d know they shit all the time, and when you got ten or fifteen birds in a cage, that cage is going to be covered with bird shit no matter how much you clean it. So I decided I’d stay a few extra minutes in the coffee shop and then just hose it down when I got back. That don’t take long.”