“Well, I don’t see no harm talking to you,” the kid said. “Provided...”
“Never mind ‘provided,’ ” Meyer said. “He just told you we can’t make any promises.”
“Well, I realize that,” the kid said, offended.
“Well, fine,” Meyer said. “So shit or get off the pot, will you?”
“I said I’d talk to you”
“Okay, so talk.”
“What do you want to know?” the kid asked.
“How about starting with your name?” Brown said.
“Samuel Rosenstein.”
“You Jewish?” Meyer said.
“Yes,” the kid said defensively. “What of it?”
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Meyer said, “why’re you shooting that poison into your body?”
“What’s it to you?” the kid said.
“Dumb bastard,” Meyer said, and walked away.
“All right, Sammy,” Brown said, “how’d you get those two decks you were carrying?”
“If you think I’m going to tell you the name of my connection, we can quit talking right this minute.”
“I didn’t ask you who, and I didn’t ask you where. I asked you how.”
“I don’t follow,” Sammy said.
“Now, Sammy,” Brown said, “you and I both know that two weeks ago there was the biggest narcotics bust we’ve ever had in this city...”
“Oh, is that it?” Sammy said.
“Is what it?”
“Is that why it’s so tough to score?”
“Don’t you read the papers?” Brown asked.
“I ain’t got time to read the papers. I just been noticing the stuff is scarce, that’s all.”
“It’s scarce because the 5th Squad busted a dope factory and confiscated two hundred kilograms waiting to be cut and packaged.”
“How much is that?”
“More than four hundred pounds.”
“Wow!” Sammy said. “Four hundred pounds of scag! That could keep me straight for a year.”
“You and every other junkie in this city. You know how much that’s worth pure?”
“How much?”
“Forty-four million dollars.”
“That’s before they cut it, huh?”
“That’s right. Before they put it on the street for suckers like you to buy.”
“I didn’t ask to be a junkie,” Sammy said.
“No? Did somebody force it on you?”
“Society,” Sammy said.
“Bullshit,” Brown said. “Tell me how you got those two decks.”
“I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore,” Sammy said.
“Okay, are we finished then? Meyer, the kid’s ready for booking.”
“Okay,” Meyer said, and walked over.
“I been saving it,” Sammy said suddenly.
“How’s that?”
“I been a junkie for almost three years now. I know there’s good times and bad, and I always keep a little hid away. That was the last of it, those two decks. You think I’d’ve busted a store window if I wasn’t desperate? Prices are skyrocketing, it’s like a regular junk inflation. Listen, don’t you think I know we’re in for a couple of bad weeks here?”
“Couple of bad months is more like it,” Meyer said.
“Months?” Sammy said, and fell silent, and looked up at the two detectives. “Months?” he said again, and blinked his eyes. “That can’t be. I mean... what’s a person supposed to do if he can’t...? I mean, what’s gonna happen to me?”
“You’re going to break your habit, Sammy,” Brown said. “In jail. Cold turkey.”
“What’ll they give me for the burglary?” Sammy asked. His voice was quite low now; he seemed drained of all energy.
“Ten years,” Brown said.
“Is this a first offense?” Meyer asked.
“Yeah. I usually... I usually get money from my parents, you know? I mean, enough to get me through the week. I don’t have to steal, they help me out, you know? But the prices are so high, and the junk is so lousy... I mean, you’re paying twice as much for half the quality, it’s terrible, I mean it. I know guys who’re shooting all kinds of shit in their arms. It’s a bad scene, I got to tell you.”
“How old are you, Sammy?” Meyer asked.
“Me? I’ll be twenty on the sixth of September.”
Meyer shook his head and walked away. Brown unlocked the handcuff and led Sammy out of the squadroom, to where he would be booked for Third-Degree Burglary at the muster desk downstairs. He had told them nothing new.
“So now what?” Meyer said to Carella. “Now we book him on the smash-and-grab, and he’ll be convicted, of course, and what did we accomplish? We sent another addict to prison. That’s like sending diabetics to prison.” He shook his head again and, almost to himself, said, “A nice Jewish boy.”
5
Frank Reardon had lived in an eight-story building on Avenue J, across the street from a huge multilevel parking lot. On Friday morning the electric company was tearing up the street outside in an attempt to get at some underground cables, and cars were stalled all up and down the avenue as Hawes rang the bell to the superintendent’s apartment. The apartment was on street level, at the far end of a narrow alley on the left-hand side of the building. Even here, insulated from the street outside, Hawes could hear the insistent stutter of the pneumatic drills, the impatient honking of horns, the shouts of the motorists, the angry retorts of the men tearing up the street. He rang the bell again, unable to hear anything over the din and wondered if it was working.
The door opened suddenly. The woman standing there in the shaded doorway to the apartment was perhaps forty-five years old, a blond slattern wearing only a soiled pink slip and fluffy pink house slippers. She looked up at Hawes out of pale, cool green eyes, flicked an ash from her cigarette, and said, “Yeah?”
“Detective Hawes,” he said, “87th Squad. I’m looking for the super.”
“I’m his wife,” the woman said. She dragged on her cigarette, let out a stream of smoke, studied Hawes again, and said, “Mind showing me your badge?”
Hawes took out his wallet and opened it to where his shield was pinned to the leather opposite a Lucite-encased identification card. “Is your husband home?” he asked.
“He’s downtown picking up some hardware,” the woman said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m investigating a homicide,” Hawes said. “I’d like to take a look at Frank Reardon’s apartment.”
“He kill somebody?” the woman asked.
“The other way around.”
“Figures,” she said knowingly. “Let me put something on, and get the key.”
She went back into the apartment without closing the door. Hawes waited outside in the cool alleyway. The forecasters had predicted a high of ninety-four degrees, a humidity reading of 81 percent, and an unsatisfactory air-pollution level. On the street outside, the motorists were honking and yelling, and the drills were yammering. Through the open doorway, Hawes saw the woman pull the slip over her head. She had been naked under the garment, and she moved silently across the room now, her body flashing white as she receded deeper into the dimness. When she came back to the doorway, her hair was combed and she had put on fresh lipstick, a short green cotton smock, and white sandals.
“Ready?” she said.
He followed her out of the alley into the sudden blinding heat of the day, and then to the front door of the building and up the stairs to the third floor. The woman said nothing. The hallways and the steps were scrupulously clean and smelled of Lysol. At 10:00 in the morning the building was silent. The woman stopped outside an apartment marked with the brass numerals 34. As she unlocked the door, she said, “How’d he get killed?”