“A couple.”
“Two cops, not one.”
“A team,” Monoghan said. “So one of you can stay here to wrap while the other one goes to the hospital. That’s the way to do it.”
“That’s the only way to do it,” Monroe said.
“That’s the way we’d do it.”
“That’s the only way we’d do it.”
“Send us your paper shit,” Monoghan said.
“In triplicate,” Monroe said, and both Homicide detectives walked out into the rain toward where their black Buick sedan was parked.
Meyer sighed.
2
A dying man’s declaration is admissible evidence in court, but Ambrose Harding was far from dying. He was, in fact, a very lucky man. Had the bullet entered his back a little lower and a bit more to the right, it might have smashed his spinal column. Even had it missed his vertebrae and the posterior rib cage, it might have passed through a lung to shatter one of his anterior ribs and exit through the chest wall — in which case, he’d have undergone immediate surgery and would at this moment have been in the Intensive Care Unit with a respirator tube sticking out of his larynx, another tube draining his chest, and yet more tubes intravenously feeding him dextrose, water, and blood. Instead, and because the bullet had entered his back high on the left shoulder, missing the scapula and then only fracturing the left clavicle on exit, he was now on the hospital’s orthopedic floor, his left shoulder immobilized in a cast, but otherwise only mildly sedated and feeling pretty good, all things considered.
The detective who spoke to him was Steve Carella. They had tossed a coin to see who stayed at the scene in the rain, and Meyer had lost. Meyer sometimes suspected that Carella had a coin with two heads. But even when Meyer called heads, Carella won. Maybe Carella also had a coin with two tails. Or maybe Carella was just lucky. Ambrose Harding was certainly lucky. He told Carella how lucky he was, and Carella — who’d informed him at once that Chadderton was dead — assured him that he was lucky indeed.
“Tried to kill us both, that’s for damn sure,” Harding said. “Stood over me with the gun in his hand, aimin for my head. Pulled the trigger three times, standin over me like that. Thing was empty. Otherwise, I’d be dead.”
“How many shots were fired all together, do you know?”
“I wasn’t countin, man. I was runnin.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“We were walkin along, that’s what happened, talkin about the concert...”
“What concert?”
“George done a concert at a hall on Culver and Eighth. We were headin uptown to where I parked the car— What’s gonna happen to my car, man? Am I gonna go back there and find a parkin ticket on it?”
“Tell me where you parked it, I’ll make sure it isn’t tagged.”
“It’s in front of a pawnshop on Culver and Twelfth.”
“I’ll take care of it. When you say a concert...”
“George done a concert.”
“What kind of concert?”
“He sung calypso. You ever hear of King George?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“That’s George Chadderton. That’s the name he used. King George. I’m his business manager. Used to be, I guess,” he said, and shook his head.
“What time did the concert begin?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“And when did it end?”
“Eleven or so. Time we left the hall, it musta been, I don’t know, eleven-thirty. Had to get the bread, you know, say hello to some people...”
“How much did the job pay?”
“Three fifty. I took fifty as my commission, he was left with the three bills.”
“In hundreds?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, go on. You left the hall at...”
“Eleven-thirty, something like that. We were walkin toward the car, rainin like a bitch, talkin about the concert, you know, when all of sudden somebody cuts loose from the buildin there.”
“Did you see the person shooting?”
“Not just then.”
“When?”
“When he was standin over me tryin to kill me. I’d already been hit then, I was layin flat on the sidewalk.”
“Was he white or black?”
“I don’t know, man. I only saw that gun pointin at me.”
“How about his hand? Did you see his hand?”
“I saw his hand, yes.”
“White or black?”
“Damn if I know. All I saw was... first I saw his boots, black boots, and then these skinny pants legs, and then I looked up and saw that gun pointin at me.”
“Was the hand around the gun white or black?”
“I don’t know. He was wearin a black coat, the sleeve of the coat was black.”
“And the hand?”
“I don’t know, man. All I saw was that big mother gun lookin me in the eye.”
“How big?” Carella asked.
“Big, man.”
“Are you familiar with guns?”
“Only from the army.”
“Would this have been as big as a .45, for example?”
“Big as a cannon, man! When a gun’s pointin at your head, it’s a cannon, never mind what caliber it is. Anyway, why you askin me? Can’t your own people work that out? Don’t you have people can tell what kind of gun it was? The caliber and all that?”
“Yes, we have people who can do that.”
“Cause, man, all I know is I thought it was all over — goodbye, nice to’ve met you. I was layin there lookin up at that thing and thinkin, In two, three seconds there’s gonna be a hole in my head. Then click, man, the thing’s empty! He pulled that trigger three times tryin to do me in, but the gun was empty.”
“What happened then?”
“He ran off, that’s what. Heard people comin, figured he’d best get out of there, stead of standin in the rain with a gun ain’t doin the job.”
“Tell me about the concert,” Carella said. “How’d it go?”
“Beautiful.”
“No problems?”
“None. Crowd loved him.”
“Nobody heckling him from the audience or—”
“No, man, they were cheerin him, they loved him.”
“How many people would you guess were there?”
“Three-fifty, cordin to the guy runs the hall. But he’s a crook, and maybe he sold more at the door than he let on.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were spose to get a dollar a head. Capacity was four hundred, it sure looked to me like the place was near full.” Harding sighed, and then shook his head, and then sighed again. “Don’t seem to matter much now, does it?”
“What’s the man’s name? The one who runs—”
“Lou Davis.”
“White man?”
“Black.”
“Did you talk to him about the head count?”
“George tole him he was a crook, that’s all.”
“What’d he say?”
“Who? Davis? He laughed, that’s all.”
“What’s he look like, this Davis?”
“Short fat guy.”
“Short fat guy,” Carella repeated.
“Them legs in the skinny pants weren’t Lou Davis’s legs, if that’s what you’re thinkin.”
“Tell me more about the crowd.”
“I told you, they loved him.”
“Young crowd?”
“Not for the most part.”
“Any teenagers in it?”
“None that I saw. Kids don’t much dig calypso. With calypso, you got to think, man, you got to make an effort to hear what the man is sayin up there. Kids today, they don’t like to do much thinkin. They like it all spoon-fed. When George was up there layin it down, you had to use your head. You know what calypso is, are you familiar with calypso?”